


Fuller Prep

by stratumgermanitivum



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: 1960s, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - High School, Boarding School, Canon-Typical Violence, Corporal Punishment, M/M, Marijuana, Minor Character Death, Murder, Murder Boyfriends?, Murder Husbands, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Slow Burn, Thriller, and used by minors, because of that murder thing, because we like Jack Crawford, but YOUNGER, but also slightly ignoring that last one, not portrayed positively or sexually, of a minor, written by someone who's never smoked it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-08-11 10:07:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stratumgermanitivum/pseuds/stratumgermanitivum
Summary: In 1965, America went to Vietnam, and so did Bill Graham Sr. His son, fifteen and too young to either follow along or stay behind on his own, went to Fuller Prep instead. There, he met Hannibal Lecter, and began a slow descent from which neither would ever properly recover.ON HIATUS. Not discontinued, just set aside for a bit until I can make it work again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grahamcracker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grahamcracker/gifts).



> Also known as my October Mystery Project, this is my gift for [ugnsgrill](https://ugnsgrill.tumblr.com/) for the Spooky Fic Exchange. It is... a lot longer than I expected it to be.

In 1965, America went to Vietnam, and so did Bill Graham Sr. His son, fifteen and too young to either follow along or stay behind on his own, went to Fuller Prep instead.

Fuller Preparatory School was a boy’s boarding school in the middle of nowhere, Virginia. Will Graham, Jr. took a train and two buses to get there, and was a miserable lump of teenage boy by the time he arrived in Headmaster Crawford’s office. Headmaster Crawford, however, was used to miserable lumps of teenage boys, and he progressed immediately into his speech as if Will was not glaring at him from the depths of a particularly ratty coat.

“I’m told you’re trouble, Mr. Graham,” Headmaster Crawford said.

“I was told the same thing about you,” Will replied, because he had not yet reached that stage in life where wisdom self-preservation wore away a person’s sharp edges, and because it was true. Fuller Preparatory School was not known for its rigorous academic standards, for its carefully funded athletic programs, or even for the sprawling acres of land it sat upon, complete with a forest that consumed at least one student per year, occasionally requiring a search party to fetch them back out again. No, Fuller Prep was known for Jack Crawford, and the way parents everywhere had clutched their chests in horror when a black man had somehow managed to find himself headmaster of a school full of mostly white children. There were rumors that money had changed hands, but no one could deny that Fuller Prep’s greatest academic achievements had come after Jack Crawford took the position, and so the school remained open, parents paying through the nose for the privilege of complaining about their children’s Headmaster behind his back.

Will’s words caught up with him a full ten seconds after he said them, Headmaster Crawford’s gaze heavy on his face. He was just turning a rather unattractive shade of red, when the man began to laugh.

“I’m sure you were, Mr. Graham,” Headmaster Crawford told him, settling back down into his desk chair, “So why don’t we both agree to only be the best we’ve heard of each other, deal?” He held out his hand, and Will hesitated, not because of the color of the man’s skin, but because of the calculating look he’d given Will’s file, the same look he was giving Will now, a look that said he would peel back Will’s skin to look inside his skull, if only given the chance.

Will knew what his file said. He was trouble, yes, in and out of detention and stumbling through assignments even when the teachers knew damn well he had the material memorized, but he was also exceedingly clever. Too clever, by half, enough to frighten the principal of his previous school. Always underfoot, always where he shouldn’t be, knowing things he shouldn’t know. His English teacher had been having an affair with the principal’s secretary. Will figured it out because of a stain on the man’s _tie._

“Yessir,” Will finally said, all one word, fast and earnest, as he shook Headmaster Crawford’s hand. Headmaster Crawford did not quite smile, but he quirked his head and his eyes glinted in a way that might have been positive, if Will had not already learned to be mistrustful of most adults.

“Dr. Chilton?” Headmaster Crawford called, nodding to the man who entered the room, “Take Will Graham to Slade Hall, please.”

Dr. Chilton was the Deputy Headmaster, second in command. What Will knew of him could not have filled a book jacket, let alone the volume it contained, but very little of _that_ was positive. He knew from research that Dr. Chilton had worked at the school longer than Headmaster Crawford, that he had wanted to position Crawford now held, and that he’d almost gotten it. From looking, Will could see even more, like the contempt Dr. Chilton wore like armor, flooding over his skin in waves. Contempt for Crawford, even as Dr. Chilton smiled and nodded like a good little Deputy, but more contempt for Will, and likely for the boys in general.

Dr. Chilton walked briskly, with little regard for whether or not Will kept up. Will had not yet hit the growth spurt that would eventually take him into adulthood, and his bag was heavy, with a broken clasp that needed a second hand to seal shut. He stumbled after Dr. Chilton with quick, struggling footsteps, a duckling that had not yet found its footing.

There was a boy on the front lawn outside of the dormitory, leaning against a tree and holding court with a small handful of other boys. He was both taller and more put together than Will, although most other boys were. None of the other boys could hold a candle to this one, dressed sharply in a full suit jacket. Will only saw him for a second, brown eyes locked on Will’s blue, before Will’s gaze slid onward, following after Dr. Chilton. Will was aware, in that second, of something _cold_ , before time moved forward again, and he forgot entirely about the boy.

“Slade Hall is one of three dormitories at Fuller Prep,” Dr. Chilton explained as they walked, “Each room has space for two boys. You’re very lucky, actually. Just two years ago we hadn’t yet finished Rymer Hall, and each room held up to four boys. Your head of house is Mr. Price, who also teaches the sciences. If you have any questions, you will reserve them for the house prefects, instead of bothering Mr. Price. Your house prefects are chosen from the 11th and 12th grade classes. This year, Slade Hall’s prefects are Lecter, Budge, and Gideon. They report directly to me, and I mete out punishments based on the information they provide. You would do well not to irritate them.”

Dr. Chilton spoke as if boys irritated the prefects, and by extension Dr. Chilton, on a regular basis. Will never intended to irritated _anyone,_ it usually just sort of… happened. He had little hope for avoiding that trend at Fuller Prep.

Will’s room was up two flights of stares and down a long hallway. By the time they arrived, Will was struggling for breath from the effort of hoisting his bag and fighting to keep up with Dr. Chilton’s long stride. The room had a pleasant view of the courtyard through it’s only window. It was the only thing pleasant about it. It was filthy, for one, with Will’s roommate’s things spreading over to the unused side of the room, and for another, it reeked of a scent Will had caught more than once on the docks. Great, his roommate was a toker. Pot always made Will feel anxious and itchy, and his skin was already crawling.

Will’s roommate was a tall, dark haired boy who scrambled to shove a magazine under the pillow when Dr. Chilton barged in. Dr. Chilton was evidently too busy to be bothered with that, a fact Will was grateful for. The sooner he was out of the man’s presence, the sooner Will could ditch the room so that the little hairs on the back of his neck would stop standing at attention.

“Mr. Brown,” Dr. Chilton said, with more disgust than he’d yet managed to infuse into his conversation with Will, “Still in bed, at this hour?”

“Aww, Doc, it’s Saturday,” the boy said, grinning up at Dr. Chilton. There was something wild in his smile, something feral. Something that enjoyed the look of absolute loathing Dr. Chilton sent his way. “Not like I’ve got places to be, right?”

“Right,” Dr. Chilton replied, turning back towards Will, “This is your new roommate. I trust you’ll take care of him from here on out.”

“Will do, Dr. Chilton,” The boy said with a mockery of a military salute. Will suspected the only reason he didn’t receive any ire for it was that there was no clear-cut rule against playfulness. Dr. Chilton looked as though he would rectify that, given the slightest chance.

“Right,” Dr. Chilton repeated, sounding less and less pleased the longer he stood in the room. “Clean this mess up before inspections.” He dismissed himself with barely a glance towards the boy, and only a halfhearted glare for Will. Will watched him go with a mixture of trepidation and relief swirling in his stomach.

Will’s roommate let out a low whistle and sprawled back onto his pillow. “Saturday morning tour with Doc Chilton? Fun times. Matthew Brown.” He held out a hand for Will to shake; Will had to step over an ominously tilting laundry pile to take it.

“Will Graham,” He said, peering down at the mess with a look of dismay. Matthew grinned at him. “Don’t worry, I always get it tidied up in time for room inspection. I won’t take you down with me.”

“Okay,” Will said, retreating towards the empty bed. He didn’t have much to put away, just the heavy bag. He didn’t see much point in unpacking it. When you moved as often as the Grahams did, you learned to live out of bags. Then again, this would be his first time staying in one place for months on end, and it might be nice to use the sturdy wooden dresser. He was already eyeing the desk speculatively.

“Do you talk, Will Graham?” Matthew asked him.

“I talk!” Will protested, a light flush settling over his face. “I just… I don’t got much to say sometimes.”

Will and his father had moved around quite a bit, but Will’s primary upbringing had been the swamps of Louisiana, and he hadn’t yet lost the speech that clung to him. He could see the amusement in Matthew’s eyes at the way Will’s words drew themselves out.

“Don’t _have_ _,”_ Will corrected hastily, but the damage was done.

“Where’d you get an accent like that, kid?”

“Up an’ down the coast, but New Orleans and thereabouts, mostly,” Will said, careful to enunciate every word. It was too late to sound North, but he’d be damned if he was gonna give Matthew any more ammunition, or anyone else for that matter.

“N’awlins,” Matthew drawled anyway, and Will winced.

“You know no one actually says it that way, right?”

Matthew shrugged, uncaring and unbothered. Will blamed the Mary-Jane. “You’re too easy,” Matthew told him, stretching. “You’re not gonna last a day, are you?”

Will’s face colored and he scrambled for words that wouldn’t come. Matthew rolled his eyes.

“Did Doc tell you the thing about taking your problems to the prefects?” Matthew asked.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t. Budge’ll eat you alive, Lecter probably won’t even listen, and Gideon will want a price in return.”

Will mouthed the names quietly to himself, committing them to memory. Matthew yawned and stretched again, pulling himself out of bed. “Come on, I’ll show you to the caf and point out all the avoidables.”

“Avoidables?”

“People you aren’t gonna talk to if you don’t want to get eaten.”

Will, having little else to do, trailed after him.

“That’s Lecter,” Matthew told him as they crossed the courtyard, pointing out the boy who was still leaning up against the tree, surrounded by people, “And his fanatics.”

This did not seem to be an entirely inaccurate summary; one of the boys was looking at Lecter with something akin to worship. Lecter was tall, much taller than Will, who’s father assured him he was still growing. Fair-haired and dark-eyed, Lecter had reached that point where he began to look more man than boy, creeping towards adulthood in both face and mannerism. He held court as well as any adult Will had seen, with a smile that soothed his peers and rubbed Will the wrong way. Will looked just long enough to memorize him, and then pulled himself away.

He did not see the way dark eyes followed him as he trailed Matthew.

“So don’t talk to Lecter?” Will asked.

“Don’t talk to Lecter,” Matthew agreed, “He’s the _worst_. Lecter’s got his uncle’s cash spilling out of his ears, he’s always signed up for weekend trips into town. You see what he’s decked out in? _Suits_ , man, he wears dad suits.”

“Lots of people wear suits,” Will pointed out. This all sounded more like envy than any real reason to avoid Lecter, but as Will actually had to _live_ with Matthew, he chose not to say that out loud.

“Yeah? Lots of seventeen year old boys running around in suits down in N’awlins?”

Will shut his mouth.

\-----  
The cafeteria was a crowded mess of boys, noisy and jostling. Will kept his arms tucked over his chest and followed closely behind Matthew to avoid the worst of the mess.

“That’s Budge,” Matthew explained, indicating a dark skinned boy across the room, “Don’t screw with him. He got a lot of shit when Crawford made him a prefect, and he gives back double.”

A few tables away, Matthew indicated another boy, one who had zoned in on them immediately and was flagging Matthew down.

“Mr. Brown, my dear friend,” The boy said, reaching out to clasp one of Matthew’s hands in his own.

“Mr. Gideon,” Matthew said with a nod, and Will watched in disbelief as the handshake passed a small bag from Matthew’s hands to Gideon’s. “I don’t suppose you know who’s doing room inspections this week?”

“You know, it’s Lecter’s turn, but I’ve been meaning to pick up some more slack. Can’t make my friends do all my work for me, now can I?”

“What sort of a friend would that make you?” Matthew smiled at him, all teeth, and Gideon returned the look.

“I’ll see you Thursday, Mr. Brown. Oops. Don’t tell anyone I let that slip.”

“Of course not. See you Thursday.” Matthew turned on his heels, heading across the room without waiting to see if Will would follow.

“I thought you said to keep away from Gideon,” Will hissed, hurrying after him.

“No, I said Gideon would want a price. I have that price. _You_ should keep away from Gideon.” Matthew didn’t look at Will as he said it, but Will was suddenly aware of his ratty shirt, of the hole that was beginning to wear through the knee of his jeans. Scholarship boy, that was him, here because he tested well, even if the assignments tended to go missing, and because he fascinated Headmaster Crawford. That and his father slipping every spare cent he had after the booze into the school’s pockets.

Matthew sighed as he led Will through the lunch line. They were the same age, but Matthew was taller, and he looked almost parental as he clapped a hand onto Will’s shoulders. “Look, kid. Just stay close and don’t get into any trouble, you’ll be fine. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Will made it less than two weeks.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, anyone who follows me on Tumblr or reads my other stories may have noticed that I am a teeny bit stressed lately and have had just an itty bitty amount of trouble getting updates out regularly. What (Besides my job at Big Name Retail Chain) has kept me so busy? Well, way back in September word went around about the Spooky Hannibal Fic Exchange. "Awesome!" I thought, "I've never done a fic exchange, I'll write a fun little one-shot and go about my life!)
> 
> And then I got my prompt and went 'oh fuck' because there was no way I was ever going to fit all of that into a one-shot. Because we all know Strats never shuts the fuck up. In fact, I did not finish the entire story yet, although a good chunk of it is done. The main document jumps around a bit, with me writing whatever I feel like it, but let's just say it takes more than 10K to even get to the meat of the prompt. Oops. Fuck. 
> 
> I won't be posting the prompt until the end because it contains SPOILERS. But I've done my best to fill everything that was asked for. This was exhausting but also a lot of fun. I'll be posting every few days until I've caught up with where I am in the doc, and then this fic will join a regular schedule with my other WIPs, although I'll probably give this one a few additional updates so I don't drag this fic exchange out too long. 
> 
> About the fic itself: ugnsgrill's knowledge of boarding schools is European (As is the internet's. It was very difficult to find any detailed reference to boarding schools or corporal punishment that didn't refer exclusively to British schools.), while my extremely limited knowledge of the 60s is exclusively American. So I've done a sort of weird blend of the both, so if you're sitting around going 'do American schools even have prefects,' please know that I have no idea and do not care. 
> 
> When discussing historical accuracy, I was asked to please not ignore bigoted views of the time, but also told that I was welcome to twist history just a tiny bit in Jack's favor. Because there's almost no way he'd be headmaster of a school of mostly white children in 1965. But I like Jack and no one else would have fit the role. 
> 
> I typically don't ask for concrit, but in this case, please correct me if I mangle the period too much or include slang that is too modern. 
> 
> I know fandom has a bit of a berserk button about smol!Will but I couldn't resist. Rest assured that he will one day be 5'11!Will, but he is currently 15 years old and I can make him smol if I want to.
> 
> This story will feature NO explicit sex (ugnsgrill asked for no porn and I won't write underaged regardless), but there will be brief references to it between Will, who will be 16 at that point, and Hannibal, who will be 17. It will be no more explicit than a teen novel (and in fact I have read teen novels more explicit than this fic). There will be gross violence though because Hannibal. 
> 
> (also all the buildings were named after people who worked on the show Fight Me)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my original writing, I took a break between the previous chapter and this one, and that led to me making at least one huge change that I didn't account for when posting, namely Will's incident changing from 'three days' to 'a week and a half'. As such, the final line of the previous chapter has been updated to avoid massive error. Sorry, guys!
> 
> Also, this is the chapter where those warnings come into play, please heed them!

Fuller Prep was a sprawling mess of buildings, different sizes and shapes, but with the same brick foundations to each one. Will got lost twice in the first day alone. The first time, he had an understanding teacher who let him off with a warning. The second, he had the bad luck to be caught out of class by Dr. Chilton, who gave him a write-up instead.

“Three write-ups gets you a detention,” Dr. Chilton warned Will, handing him his own copy of the slip, “I have as much desire to spend my off-hours babysitting you as you do to be stuck with me. Don’t make us both miserable, understood?”

“Yessir,” Will had said, grumpy and irritated. When Dr. Chilton left, he still didn’t know where his classroom was.

Prefects were ‘avoidables,’ as were teachers, especially Dr. Chilton. Not that it mattered, as none of those people had any particular interest in speaking to Will. Will wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done to piss off Budge, although Matthew assured him that Budge hated everyone indiscriminately, but he and his friends (“Co-conspirators,” Matthew had corrected, “Budge doesn’t have _friends_.”) gave Will dirty looks every time he dared to walk too close to their group.

What he did to piss off Randall Tier, on the other hand, was common knowledge to everyone the minute it happened.

Will was not the sort of boy who started fights, but he was absolutely the sort of boy who finished them.

Tier was the sort of boy who started fights, and then fought _dirty_.

In retrospect, it was a miracle that it took them a week and a half to end up in each others’ faces.

‘Pick on the new kid’ was a time honored tradition in every school Will had ever been to. Several months earlier, at the start of the school year, all the freshman had been through it and been miserable. Next year, they would gleefully pick on the incoming freshman, unleashing all the pent up anger they had left over from their own suffering. It was only Will’s bad luck that he’d transferred in the middle of the year, making him the sole ‘new kid’ around. The freshmen were getting in their practice early, following the older kids for signs of how to handle the newest addition to the flock.

Randall Tier was a freshman, but one who had quickly climbed to the top of the pecking order through sheer viciousness. There were rumors that he’d had his teeth filed into fangs. This was not true, of course, as Tier was a fourteen year old boy who still had parents to answer to, but he couldn’t honestly say the idea didn’t appeal to him.

There were rumors about Will too, of course. He was quiet and odd, and all eyes were on him. Most often, Will heard he’d been kicked out of his old school for snapping in the middle of an English class. The truth, that Will transferred schools regularly and only ended up here because there was no one at home to feed him, was far too boring for teenagers.

It was only a matter of time before they conflicted. A rule of thumb, in any school, was that one should always try to encourage the other boy to start the fight, and thereby potentially minimize guilt when the adults inevitably arrived to break things up. It started with little things, tiny pieces of paper flicked into Will’s curls from a distance, feet appearing in Will’s path when he least expected it. No doubt, if Will had been a girl, Tier would have been pulling his pigtails. Petty little squabbles that Will should have been able to ignore, and, at first, Will was determined to do so. He was better than this, better than rash responses and unfocused rage, or at least he wanted to be. “Don’t cause trouble,” his father had said when he shipped Will off to school, and Will had wanted to listen, really he had.

Will’s resolve broke at dinner time on a Tuesday, when the next piece of paper to wind up in his curls turned out to be dripping with saliva.

“What the hell is your problem?” He yelled, whirling around in his seat to glare at Tier. Tier’s little sycophants went quiet, watching eagerly as Tier straightened up to face him. Across the table from Will, Matthew reached out to trap Will’s wrist in a death grip, hissing, “Will, don’t!”

“I don’t have a problem,” Tier said, slow and steady, smiling like Will had said something funny. “Why, do you have a problem, Graham?”

“You’re damn right I have a problem!” Will shrugged off Matthew’s hand and frantic whispers and drew up to his full height. Unfortunately, so did Tier.

Tier was big for his age, and Will was small and underfed. When Tier stood, he claimed three inches and about twenty pounds over Will. Will took in his obvious disadvantage, recounting all the things he had heard about Tier’s previous fights, and set himself right in Tier’s face anyway.

“Back off, Graham,” Tier warned, leaning over Will as if the difference was miles instead of mere inches, “Go back to your pudding, and we won’t have any trouble.”

Tier didn’t file his teeth, obviously, but Will could see what he’d done to his nails. Bitten until they were rough and jagged, always with stains beneath them as if he’d clawed his way through his peers. And perhaps he had. There was more than one freshman walking around with scratch marks on their arms, and not nearly enough feral cats in the woods to justify it. His eyes were bright with a gleeful mischief. He was almost more animal than boy, all instinct and violence. Will wanted to knock the smile off his face.

“What if I want trouble?” Will asked, feeling stupid for having said it and yet unable to stop himself, “What if I’m sick of you dancing around behind my back like a schoolgirl with her first crush?”

Tier’s fists clenched hard enough that Will was sure his palms would bleed. Now would be an excellent time for Will to walk away and forget he’d ever drawn this much attention to himself.

But Tier’s friends were all looking between them expectantly, and Will would always be the king of bad decisions.

“ _Do_ you have a crush, Randall?” He asked, voice dripping with soft sweetness, “Because, I’d have to say, you’re not really my type.

In the end, Tier threw the first punch, a fist to Will’s cheek that snapped his head back painfully. Will had been braced for it, but a punch was still a punch, no matter how many others you’d been through. He could feel the heat of burst capillaries blooming across his cheek, no doubt reddened and darkening quickly, but there was no time to think of that, when Tier’s next attempt had claws. Tier fought tooth and nail, literally, but Will fought with his entire body, throwing every inch of his scrawny frame into violence. They went down in a tumble of limbs, collapsing to the floor and fighting for dominance. Tier got a good bite into Will’s arm, but Will managed to smack Tier’s head against the tile floor, so they were probably even. Will might have even managed the upper hand, if Tier didn’t fight just as dirty.

There were rules to schoolyard fights, unspoken but known by any boy who’d ever been in one. There were no ‘seconds,’ for one. You fought your own battles, without help, and your friends helped you get revenge later if necessary. For another, ‘below the belt’ hits were cheating. Mostly because no boy wanted to risk the retaliation.

Randall Tier did not follow rules. He got a knee up so fast that Will yelped, embarrassingly high pitched, as all the breath fled his body at once. Tier flipped him onto his back and aimed a kick for his ribs, then another, and then a third before they were finally interrupted. Will was yanked back by the armpits, dimly aware that it was Gideon who held him. It took Lecter and Budge _both_ to restrain Tier, who was wordless with rage and snarling like an animal. Lecter had his eyes locked on Will, curiosity and ice as thick as glaciers in his gaze. Every time Will looked at him, he was a valley of cold, but it was the curiosity that turned Will’s eyes away.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Will choked out, because no teenage boy would ever admit they’d been _losing_ the fight, “My grandmother hit harder than you, and she had arthritis!”

“That is _enough_.” Dr. Chilton had finally arrived, trailing a freshman who would inevitably be known as a fink for the rest of his time at Fuller Prep. Even the prefects, who would eventually have reported it, gave the boy a wary eye for having run to an adult so quickly.

Dr. Chilton stood between them, towering over both boys, who were still awkwardly sprawled across the floor. “Headmaster’s office,” He hissed, “ _Now.”_

_\-----_

Will was pretty sure he wasn’t getting expelled, but it didn’t make the waiting any better. Tier went to his demise first, and while Will could not make out the words, he could hear Headmaster Crawford’s steady, gruff cadence through the door. At once point, his voice rose almost to a shout, and Will could not discern the meaning over his own flinch. Will disliked being yelled at. Certainly, everybody disliked being yelled at, but for Will, the dislike did not come from shame or discomfort. He hated feeling small, being treated as younger than he was, weaker than he was. In his experience, people usually yelled to place themselves above you. Will thought it was stupid. Either you were better than someone, or you weren’t, and yelling was not going to change that. If anything, yelling tilted you downward, made you beneath the person, since you had to stoop so low to prop yourself up so high.

Tier did not come out for a long time, long enough for the ache to settle properly into Will’s teeth. His face felt like it belonged to someone else, swollen and stiff with pain. Tier kicked Will’s chair on his way past, and the motion radiated white-hot through Will’s body. He was panting when Headmaster Crawford beckoned him through the doorway, and the man was at least nice enough to let Will catch his breath before he started in on him.

“This isn’t the first fight you’ve been in, is it boy?”

“Nos sir.” Will mumbled, eyes on the desk. Headmaster Crawford would have read his file, there was no point in denying it.

“I won’t insult you by demanding you tell me who started the fight. I know you’re not going to tell me.” He had that one right. Will was going to be dodging enough blows as it was.

“Thank you, sir.”

“And yet, I find a trail of violence takes you to my doorstep.”

Will did not have an answer to that that was neither sarcastic nor vitriolic, and he was feeling far too worn out to start any more arguments. He stared mutely at the desk and let Headmaster Crawford speak at him.

“We have a policy here at Fuller Prep. Everyone takes responsibility for themselves. If you participate in a fight, you’re guilty. We might be a little bit harder on instigators, but you’re all big boys. We expect you to know how to extract yourselves from situations without violence. If you start a fight, you get punished. If you finish a fight, you get punished. It’s as simple as that.”

“Yessir.”

“You know, Mr. Graham, I’m expecting more of you.”

That got Will’s attention. He glanced up at Headmaster Crawford’s face, at that calculation that always struck him when he was thinking about Will.

“You’re a bright boy. Intuitive. Take everything in, don’t you, Mr. Graham?”

“I suppose so, sir.”

“You could do a lot more with that than sink your teeth into Mr. Tier, couldn’t you?”

“Yessir.”

Headmaster Crawford seemed amused by Will’s sycophantic acquiescence. Will had learned that agreement was the best way to survive adults, but Headmaster Crawford was experienced with teenage boys, and not fooled.

“We’re still going to have to punish you for this time, of course, but you might think of other things than violence, in between your classes.”

“Like what? Sir,” Will added hastily.

“Like observing the world around you. Keeping an eye out on your fellow students.”

“You want me to fink,” Will said before he could stop himself, folding back into his sullen posture.

“Of course not. I know what it means to be a snitch at your age.” Privately, Will doubted that. This was one of the things adults said, but did not really mean. They’d grown out of the lightning-fast emotional upheaval that was adolescence, and they no longer could understand why teenagers didn’t just… knock it off. But the better ones at least pretended they got it. Headmaster Crawford, despite the way he always looked at Will, was one of the better ones. “I’m merely suggesting you occasionally send some of those observations my way. Only things you’re comfortable with, of course.” There was a smile on Headmaster Crawford’s face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Will studied it until the answers clicked into place.

“There’s something worrying you, sir?”

“Keep calling me sir, Mr. Graham, and you’ll make me feel a lot older than I am.” As distractions went, it was a pitiful one.

“Hard for me to make observations if I don’t know what I’m supposed to be observing.”

They studied each other, two immovable objects in a stalemate.

“Lot of things can happen in these woods,” Headmaster Crawford finally said. “Missing boys. Screaming animals. They used to say a monster stalked the trees.”

“A monster?”

“An old legend, black as pitch and marked with a stag’s antlers. Something to reach out from the shadows and eat you alive. Do you believe in monsters, Mr. Graham?”

“Nossir.”

Headmaster Crawford looked at him over the desk, tired and withdrawn. “Neither do I.

\-----  
Will was not going to take Headmaster Crawford up on his spy mission, but he was not stupid enough to say that out loud. Instead, he let Headmaster Crawford dictate his punishment, sending him down the hall to Dr. Chilton’s office with the sentence clutched tight in his hand.

He passed Randall Tier on his way down. Tier didn’t bother with Will this time, too wrapped up in misery from his own session with Chilton. H was limping slightly. Will prayed to a god he didn’t truly believe in that it was from the fall and obvious concussion, and not from Chilton.

Dr. Chilton lurked in the doorway, ominous and shadowed. In a few years, Will would be taller than him, and broader from more physical hobbies than Chilton would ever pursue. Chilton’s power-lust and penchant for unorthodox cruelty would not be able to intimidate 20 year old Will Graham.

But 20 year old Will Graham was not here right now. In his place was 15 year old Will Graham, short and as-yet untested, free from the trials that would warp him into his becoming.

And 15 year old Will Graham was scared.

He had been caned by a teacher before. His father had preferred the belt, which, in Will’s opinion, was much more unpleasant.

But he had never before been struck by someone who _liked it_ , who viewed the infliction of pain as their just rewards, a treat for all they’d dealt with. Dr. Chilton led Will into the room with hungry eyes and a heavy hand on his shoulder. He guided Will to a chair, set in the middle of the room with no chance of mistaking the intent, and took the headmaster’s instructions from him.

“Only five?” Chilton murmured, tracing his fingers over the paper. “Headmaster Crawford must have been distracted; Mr. Tier was issued seven. We can’t be unfair, can we?”

“Nossir,” Will murmured hatefully. Even if deference to adults had not been drilled into him back home, one did not argue with someone who was about to strike them. Not if they wanted to make it out in one piece.

“Bend over, Mr. Graham.”

Will folded, pressing his hands to the seat of the chair and exposing himself to Dr. Chilton’s eager viciousness. He closed his eyes, blocked out sight, and tried to block out everything else.

He could not ignore the sound.

The first stroke of the cane, hailed by a swish that would haunt Will’s dreams, was always worse than the one that followed, a sudden, blinding hot pain where there had been none. The second came immediately after, harsh and fast across the same stripe. The third was more of the same, but the fourth varied the pattern, dropping from Will’s backside to the crease above his thighs. Will bit his lip so hard that he tasted copper, but held his ground. He did not cry out for the fifth, or the sixth, but the seventh, a diagonal blow across each previous line, drew a whimper from his lips.

And then came the swish, and the eighth strike, over his thighs again, just at the moment where Will had started to relax and was no longer prepared. The ninth came down exactly across the spot that bore the most weight when Will sat, and Will’s voice finally broke on a small, sharp sob. The tears were born more from the indignity and unfairness of it all, rather than the pain, but the pain was still hot and fierce across every bit of Will that could still feel.

“I’m afraid I’ve lost count, Mr. Graham,” Dr. Chilton said, lies smooth and sweet as candy, flowing from his lips as easy as truth, “Shall we say one more for good measure?”

Will tensed his entire body, even though he knew that would only make it worse. He was only creating a firmer target, but he could not help but brace himself for the blow.

A blow that didn’t come. Will stood there, bent over, thighs trembling, for a full minute, before Dr. Chilton broke the silence once more.

“Mr. Graham?”

_Power-mad, vile, impotent little-_ Dr. Chilton wanted Will complicit in his own torture, wanted Will to fold beneath him mentally as well as physically. And Will, who was only a boy and had no defense from authority, had no choice but to give him exactly what he wanted.

“Yes, Sir.”

“There we go, I knew there was a good boy in there somewhere.”

The tenth strike was somehow worse than all the rest combined. It was like the first all over again, too much time elapsing, no longer crowded out by the previous blows. Dr. Chilton delivered it with full force in a line across the middle of Will’s thighs, too far down to be entirely appropriate. Far enough down the legs, in fact, that Will had never been struck there before.

Will was crying, when Dr. Chilton urged him back up, and crying still as he was ushered out into the hallway.

“Best get into the shower,” Dr. Chilton told him, a hint of kindness to him now that he had Will how he wanted him, “The heat will soothe you, and you’ll want to get into bed soon. Be well rested for a fresh start, and all that.”

The door slammed behind him, no more comfort than a brisk pat to Will’s shoulder. But Will was still not alone.

Down the hall, leaning against the wall as if he had any right to be there, was Lecter. He’d been watching Dr. Chilton’s doorway with an intensity that was almost enough to melt the ice that he carried with him. Metaphorically speaking, yes, but he also carried a literal bag of ice in his hands. Will rubbed frantically at his damp eyes as he approached Lecter, unwilling to sob like a child in front of another boy. Particularly an older one with the power to make Will’s life miserable.

“What are you doing here?” Will meant to spit it, meant to sound like venom and fangs. Instead, he sounded plaintive, pleading. He wanted Lecter to go away, and the wanting tore from his mouth like a whine.

“Dr. Chilton can be difficult to handle, the first time. People don’t quite know what to expect.” Lecter pressed the bag into Will’s hand. Will held it in a loose grip, unwilling to suffer the humiliation of icing his wounds where someone else could see.

“So you came to check up on me? I’m not a child.” Small and young, yes, and the amusement in Lecter’s eyes said he’d noticed, but not a child. Very nearly a man, if he lived that long.

Lecter looked over Will, taking in his injuries, and the glee dropped from his face. He reached out, tracing the bruised line of Will’s cheekbone. His touch was gentler than Will expected, calloused but soft. “They should have patched you up first. Come, I’ll-”

“Just leave me alone,” Will said, half rage and half pleading as he shook his head. “Just let it go. I’ll take care of it.” He stepped back, away from soft touches and soothing offers of help. Will would handle this on his own, as he handled everything. “Just _go_.”

Only later would Will learn of Lecter’s distaste for rudeness, how strict he could be about respect. Such strictness never showed it’s face with Will, who could seem to do just about anything in front of Lecter and get away with it, but Will would not put that together for a very long time. And by then, Will would be too far gone for it to matter.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dislike fight scenes. Much like sex scenes, it's very difficult to write them in a way that flows smoothly and doesn't read like an instruction manual. But I'm decently pleased with this one. 
> 
> Randall Tier's role was played by Budge, then Dolarhyde, before I finally settled on Tier. I needed someone on Will's level, someone who paralleled him, and Budge and Dolarhyde both are more easily associated with Hannibal. So, Randall! And oh, we have not seen the last of Randall.
> 
> Nor have we seen the last of Chilton's cane. I typically only write corporal punishment in the context of kink, so this was a weird experience for me. I wanted there to be absolutely nothing sexual or arousing about this scene, because teenagers. (Although you would not be wrong to assume that Chilton is aroused, not by the boys themselves, but by the sense of power over someone. He's got some... issues. Will's diagnosis of him as a vile, impotent sadist is pretty spot on.). 
> 
> The caning was also one of the things that ended up being a blend of British/American traditions. We had corporal punishment here in America (And actually, fun fact, several states still do! What the fuck???), but what kind has a tendency to be vague. Most articles I found exclusively used the words 'corporal punishment' with no other description. I did find a reference to 'slippering,' but I just... couldn't take that seriously I'm sorry. I know it was a real punishment that caused real pain, but the idea of Chilton beating people with a shoe is just impossible for me to write with a straight face.
> 
> On the other hand, the British are very upfront about their history of caning. It's even in the third Harry Potter book, so we're not talking ancient history here. And caning just seemed a lot less silly. Plus, Chilton, canes, you know.
> 
> Next time: A really pathetic attempt at writing Marijuana use, a dog, and more of Hannibal. (Also, that chapter may be a bit short. I seem to have broken all of these up really weirdly.)


	3. Chapter 3

A freshman went missing. According to his acquaintances, he wandered off into the woods and never came back. Will might have cared more, if he hadn’t been knee-deep in his own problems.

“You’re absolutely fucking insane,” Matthew had insisted when Will finally got back to the room. He’d been smiling, though, and he pressed a tightly rolled joint into Will’s hand. “Here, it’ll help the pain.”

“How have you not gotten caught yet?” Will had asked, leaning in to let Matthew light him up.

“Friends in high places.”

Will didn’t like pot. The smell overwhelmed him, and the sensations made him raw. It relaxed him, and when Will was relaxed, he let his guard down. He took in too many things, absorbed every piece of those around him.

But it had just been him and Matthew, and the pain had been tender enough for Will to risk it. He’d crawled into bed in his school uniform, letting the haze of smoke drift through his veins, into his brain, sinking over his body until sleep started to overtake him, until Matthew had to pry the joint from his fingertips, lest Will set the bed aflame.

“You’re insane,” Matthew had repeated, once the lights were out and Will was too far gone to defend himself. “Tier is gonna kill you. First chance he gets.” But he sounded impressed, and so did the whispers Will would begin to hear over the next few days. They said they were animals, Will and Randall, vicious wild-things, more creature than boy.

For a few days, the pain kept Will out of trouble, and the rumors kept trouble away from _him._ About a week after the fight, Randall Tier started sending dirty looks Will’s way, although he’d thankfully stopped trying to step on Will’s laces or land spitballs in his hair. For now.

Aside from Tier’s heated glares and Matthew’s constant, chattering presence, no one spoke to Will. No one dared approach, now that they’d seen him bare his fangs. Will may have technically lost the fight, but there was nothing like the dull thunk of a skull against floor to scare others away. Even Lecter seemed to have vanished, perhaps taking Will’s demands to ‘go away’ to their most logical extreme. The next time Will saw Lecter, he was out past curfew, covered in mud, and holding a squirming Boston Terrier.

Like most trouble Will found himself in, the thing with the Boston Terrier was entirely, one hundred percent, _not Will’s fault_. In fact, it was at least partially Tier’s fault, since Will had been avoiding him at the time.

Will was not afraid of Randall Tier, not exactly. He was stronger than Will, and he fought dirty, but Will thought he would stand a pretty good chance in a rematch. Despite that, Will was not willing to walk down a hallway wherein Tier was the only other occupant, and he thought that was a sign of good survival skills, rather than cowardice. Such was the situation he found himself in on Friday after class. Will’s hand-me-down bag had given way at the strap again, Will’s careful stitch-work never quite enough to keep it together, and the frantic scramble for his items had delayed him in leaving. When Will finally made his way into the hallway, the crowds had dispersed, all the other boys eager to get out of their uniforms and into the weekend mindset.

Except for Tier. He lurked at the end of the hall, just before the stairway. The only stairway. His tie had already been removed. He held it loosely twined through his fists, and Will could see the intention through every line of Tier’s body.

Will did the only sensible thing. He ducked back into the chemistry lab and climbed out the window.

The chemistry lab was on the third floor, but the building was one of the newer ones, set flush against the woods that bordered the school’s acreage. On a bad day, the wind scraped tree branches against the windows, a constant shh-shh noise drawing Will’s attention away from the teacher and out into the world. For once in his life, Will was thankful for his size as he crawled out onto one of the branches. It creaked and swayed beneath his weight, and he scrambled for the trunk, clinging tight.

There was, perhaps, a _tiny_ bit of cowardice in scaling a tree to avoid a boy like Tier. A morsel. Bite-sized. Will staunchly ignored the mocking whisper of his own mind as he scaled the tree and disappeared into the woods. The last thing he needed was to bump into Tier as he left the building, after all this effort.

The woods were dark, thickly canopied by trees that predated Will, predated the school, likely predated the very concept of Virginia. It was easy to see how one might get lost. Will trailed a pocket knife alongside himself, scraping trees here and there to find his way again. He’d meant only to duck around the perimeter of the school property, just long enough to avoid Tier and sneak back into his dorm. He could hide out there, lay low for a bit until Tier got bored.

Tier was plotting something. He might never get bored.

Will shoved that thought away with no small amount of force, crushing it beneath thoughts of homework and weekend plans. He might come back out into the woods. They were quiet, but for the typical chatter of animals, and even that was not quite as loud as he might expect it to be. Will knew nature, knew the ins and outs of tracking, of stalking, of waiting. He was made for bayous and forests, not brick walls and jumbled words. Maybe he wouldn’t come back to the woods, maybe he would just never leave to begin with.

About a mile into his trek, Will tripped gracelessly over a bush.

The bush growled at him.

“Well,” Will said slowly, straightening up to his knees, “I know you’re not a raccoon.”

The bush growled again. It sounded a lot less certain this time. Will smiled and held out a hand, ducking his head to avoid direct eye contact.

“It’s alright,” He whispered, “Come on, it’s okay.”

Slowly, the growls tapered off to a more inquisitive whine. The leaves trembled in tiny little motions. Soon, a damp little nose poked it’s way out, sniffling curiously at Will’s hand. The nose was soon followed by the rest of the poor creature, a tiny little mutt with a white snout and big brown face.

“There you go,” Will cooed, “That’s it. Come see, chèr, come see.” There’d been dogs down in Louisiana, ratty things with fluffy tails. Will had coddled and fed them like they were his own children, despite the protests of his father and the neighbors. No matter where the Grahams moved, there had always been dogs. There always would be, strays and runabout pets, something familiar and safe in the roiling chaos of Will’s life.

Virginia had none of the muggy warmth of New Orleans, but Will could smell the damp of the swamp as the mutt cautiously settled into the bowl of Will’s lap. They’d been a little bit of everywhere, him and his dad, but they always came back to Louisiana, eventually. Will missed it now, missed it with a fierceness that stabbed at his insides.

“Pauvre t-bête,” Will murmured into the soft fur of the dog’s back, “It’s okay. We’ll get you all cleaned up and fed.”

Will named the dog Buster, because Will Graham had never met a mongrel he wouldn’t like to keep, and his father had always insisted naming a dog was just asking for trouble. But the Graham’s had not had the money to feed a dog. Will still didn’t, but he now lived somewhere that kept snacks on hand for growing boys. Matthew was sure to have some stored away in his dresser.

Will and Buster stayed out long enough for the sun to set, getting to know each other and waiting for the other boys to drop off into bed after the Friday night excitement. They crept together into Slade Hall, Buster hushed with constant pats of Will’s hand.

Will had hoped the showers would be empty this late, but he’d never been a particularly lucky boy. He’d avoided others all the way into the building, but in the doorway to the bathroom he nearly bumped directly into Lecter’s chest.

Lecter stood stock-still in the doorway, staring Will down. His hair was still damp, trailing faint lines down the skin of his throat. He looked over Buster with an almost amused tilt of one eyebrow, an expression that still managed to look faintly superior, despite its ridiculousness. As it was too late to avoid trouble at this point, Will doubled down, tilting his chin up and glaring.

“Bit late for a shower, isn’t it?”

Lecter smiled, just a slight quirk of his lips. “I’m afraid I’ve drawn hall duty for tonight. My curfew is a tad later than yours.”

“Good for you.” Will’s arms tensed around Buster, tight enough that the dog began to squirm unhappily. Will sighed, relaxing both his grip and his shoulders. “Look, can you just… Can you not...” He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know Lecter well enough to beg favors, and he had nothing to bargain with. Will hunched in on himself, clutching Buster close to his chest.

Lecter watched him for a long minute. There was no ice to him, not today. His dark eyes seemed almost warm, alight with curiosity.

“I believe,” He said slowly, “That it will take me more than half an hour to make it through the first two floors of patrol. That should be plenty of time for you to be in bed when I make it to your room, and then we will have no issue, will we?”

Will stared. He had been told many things about Lecter, but none of those things had involved words such as ‘leniency.’ He stared so long that Lecter chuckled softly, and stepped aside.

“You may need the full thirty minutes to break through all that mess,” He told Will, ushering him into the bathroom with a hand on his shoulder. He left Will there, confused and almost irrationally pleased.

“Well, chèr,” Will whispered, “I think we just got away with something.”

Buster’s tail wagged gleefully.

\-----  
It did indeed take nearly half an hour to wipe the muck from Buster’s wiggling frame. The knock on the bathroom door startled Will just as he was drying off Buster’s fur with fistfuls of paper towels. “Will,” Lecter called, “You’re cutting it close.”

Will hurried for the door, dumping the paper towels into the trash and wrapping Buster in his flannel shirt. Lecter took them both in with a vague hint of a smile.

“Much better,” Lecter said, but he was looking more at Will than Buster when he said it. In fact, he was very pointedly avoiding Buster. “If someone were to try and keep a dog in the building,” Lecter continued, “They would be wise to try and find an alternative before, say, Tuesday, when Dr. Chilton might be planning a surprise extra room inspection in his continued attempts to figure out who has been sneaking marijuana onto campus.”

They all knew exactly who was doing that, of course, but Matthew was surprisingly skilled at being empty handed whenever someone cornered him. Will nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”

“They also would be wise to check the janitor’s closet on the second floor on their way back to their room.”

Will gave Lecter a quizzical look, but he merely smiled and hurried off down the hall, Will’s quiet ‘thanks’ receiving only the smallest of nods in return.

In the janitor’s closet on the second floor, Will found a paper bag filled with thick cuts of meat. He clutched it close as he and Buster made their way to his room.

\-----

When Lecter’s slow and steady footsteps finally took him past their room, Will was already in bed, Buster tucked up by his pillow. Matt managed to hold himself still until Lecter had faded off down the hallway, and then he sat up in bed and flicked his lamp on.

“What the fuck?” Matt asked, staring Will down with a mixture of exasperation and pleased excitement. Will frowned back.

“It’s a dog. You’ve seen dogs before, right?”

“I know it’s a dog, smartass, what’s it doing _here?_ ”

“Sleeping. Like I would like to be.”

Matt groaned and threw a wadded up shirt at Will’s head. It flopped ineffectively onto the floor halfway between the two of them. “You’re going to get us both killed.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t drag you down with me.” Will rolled over, back to Matt, stroking the soft fur at the nape of Buster’s neck. He was still vaguely damp, but Will was one of the rare people who didn’t mind the smell of wet dog. It was soothing.

“Whatever, it’s your ass.”

And there was a point Will didn’t particularly want to dwell on. His bruises were still healing from the last incident. Will squeezed his eyes shut and blocked Matthew out, waiting for sleep to come.

\-----

Will managed to hide Buster for about a day and a half, before they were busted on a 6AM bathroom run.

6AM on a Sunday was a perfectly reasonable time to sneak a dog in and out of a dorm at an all-boys boarding school. Only completely ridiculous and unreasonable teenage boys were awake at 6AM on a day off (So, of course, Lecter could always be found in the cafeteria by 7, showered and neatly dressed and working on a cup of coffee), and Will thought it was unlikely anyone would spot them. This theory held true, through Buster’s insistent sniffing and most of the walk, right up until Will started up the concrete steps outside his dorm. The door swung open ahead of him, and Dr. Chilton came storming out, intent on Will.

“I knew you were up to something,” He said, smiling with a satisfaction that made Will nauseous. “Did you really think none of your peers would notice you sneaking about all weekend?”

Will froze on the steps like the deer would freeze when his father took him hunting. He certainly felt like he was on the other end of a rifle, heart pounding in his chest as Chilton approached. Buster, in all his sheer joy at seeing _another person to love him_ , yanked at the edge of the rope that held him. It was frayed and old, the best Will could dig up on such short notice, and as Buster started to bark, it snapped.

Dr. Chilton froze a moment too late, still poised for the next step. Buster went careening up the stairs towards him, tangling up in his feet with rope and eleven pounds of love and excitement. They both went tumbling, yelping in tones that were almost hilariously matched, until they came to rest at the bottom of the stairs. Will scrambled after them, pulling Buster from Dr. Chilton’s feet with terrified, shaking hands.

Buster was fine, having avoided much of Dr. Chilton’s weight, but he’d wet himself from the terror and excitement. The stain sprawled over the floor and absorbed into the legs of Dr. Chilton’s pants.

Will looked at Dr. Chilton. Dr. Chilton looked at Will. Neither seemed to know exactly what to say, and when Dr. Chilton finally managed to croak out, ‘Headmaster’s,’ Will went with quiet, resigned obedience.

\-----

“This is twice in a fortnight. The boy is nothing but trouble. He ought to be expelled.”

They hadn’t closed the door properly. Dr. Chilton’s agitation had shown in stiff steps and shaking hands. Will sat in the chair in the hallway, clutching Buster to his lap.

“We don’t expel boys just for wanting a pet. It’s a normal, healthy thing and we’d have to expel the whole lot of them. Don’t think I don’t know what Eldon Stammets keeps in his room.”

Dr. Chilton’s voice was filled with disgust. “Mushrooms are not pets.”

“They are the way Stammets keeps them.”

Will had heard of Eldon Stammets. Everyone had. He walked around campus like he was completely unaware that other people lived there, and he always smelled like damp potting soil. Privately, Will thought Headmaster Crawford had the right measure of it.

“Be that as it may,” Dr. Chilton drawled, “He’s broken a clearly defined rule. He also risked his own safety and that of others. I could have broken my neck. There has to be a punishment.

“And there will be. Just not expulsion. Send him in on your way out, and he’ll be down to you shortly.”

Will’s stomach twisted into knots. He thought he might rather be expelled. Dr. Chilton glared at him on his way out the door, jerking a thumb over his shoulder to gesture Will into the office. Will clutched Buster a little tighter to his chest as he went, settling himself into the chair in front of Headmaster Crawford’s desk.

“So we meet again, Mr. Graham.” The words were solemn and stern, but there was a slight upward quirk to Headmaster Crawford’s lip. He liked dogs; Will could see the lines of his face softening.

“I didn’t plan this,” Will mumbled, “It’s not like I went looking for reasons to get Chilton mad at me.”

“ _Dr. Chilton,”_ Headmaster Crawford corrected, “He earned the title, Mr. Graham, regardless of your personal feelings on the matter.”

Will flushed and ducked his head, hiding his face in Buster’s fur. “Still. I wasn’t trying to upset him. Or… Or break his neck.”

“I didn’t think you were,” the Headmaster said. Will snuck a peek at him just in time to catch a slight roll of his eyes; Will had to struggle to pull back his own answering grin. So it wasn’t only students who found Chilton… excessive. “But I’d like to know what you _were_ trying to do.”

“He was hungry,” Will mumbled, glancing away. He knew that was not an excuse. It had never worked on his father, and it was not going to work on an adult who barely knew him and had no cause to like him. “He was hungry and it’s freezing out there. I couldn’t just leave him in the woods.”

“But you didn’t have to bring him into your dorm room,” Headmaster Crawford pointed out. His tone was gentle, but the words left no room for argument. “You could have brought him here, to me. Instead of sneaking about and lying.”

“Technically, it’s not lying if you don’t actually talk to anybody.”

Headmaster Crawford stared him down, one eyebrow raised, unamused. Will ducked his head, embarrassed, and had to loosen his grip on Buster when the dog began to whine. “I don’t care for technicalities, young man, nor does Dr. Chilton. A lie of omission is still a lie, and you weren’t going to be able to hide in your dorm room forever.”

“Yessir.”

Headmaster Crawford sighed and went to his closet, digging out a large cardboard box and a sweater that had seen better days. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t end up back in the woods,” He said, tucking the sweater into the box. Will followed the unspoken command and tucked Buster into it, leaving him there with a sharp stab of regret digging through his stomach.

“Since it was Dr. Chilton you’ve upset, it’s Dr. Chilton who will decide your punishment,” Headmaster Crawford said, confirming Will’s suspicion that the two did not communicate or get along. He couldn’t see friendly Headmaster Crawford condemning him to the cane over something so stupid, but he had no doubt Chilton already had the chair out and waiting. “And maybe next time you could trust an adult to help you instead of trying to handle everything on your own.”

Will wondered if adults saw the hypocrisy in the things they said. Holding one hand out, demanding to help you, while the other held the cane.

He didn’t voice those thoughts. He left the office with only a single backwards glance to Buster, and headed straight to his doom.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So originally I was going to post this yesterday, but when I went to edit the chapter I realized I hadn't finished it! So, I sat down to finish it today... Only to realize that it was chapter FOUR I hadn't finished, and I had skipped an entire chapter that only needed minor editing! So yay! Posting!
> 
> I have never done The Marijuanas. I am a boring square. I am friends with people who smoke pot, and have seen them high, but I don't pretend to think that gives me insight into their perspective. And I don't want to get it wrong. That's why the pot smoking scenes in this fic are so vague and short. But pot was an intrinsic part of the sixties, let's be real. Drugs in general, actually, but I have even less experience with tripping on LSD soooo....
> 
> Randall isn't a murderer, but he was totally intending to choke and/or bind Will with that tie. Will made the right choice in fleeing.
> 
> I have four tabs open at all times while writing this story, to help with both 60s slang and Louisiana/Cajun slang. I really _really_ hope I'm not massively screwing it up. Come see and chèr are both pretty straightforward. Pauvre t-bête is 'poor little thing,' provided I haven't mangled the spelling. I'm from the north, guys, we don't have anything cool.
> 
> I really enjoy infatuated teen Hannibal. He has such a crush. Will, on the other hand, is definitely oblivious, although to be fair, if you were a teenage boy in the sixties your first thought probably wouldn't be 'he's gay and into me.' Even if you yourself were gay.
> 
> Hannibal probably doesn't have a fridge in his room, because sixties, and even if they have a shared kitchen for snacks in the dorm, they probably don't keep huge chunks of meat in the fridge. So yes, he did indeed completely skip out on his hall monitor duties in order to run over to the kitchens, break in, and steal food for Will's dog. A thing that Will did not think too hard about, or he might have wondered _why._
> 
> I'm not sure if there will be any more detailed caning scenes. I feel like one was perfectly sufficient to get the point across, and as interesting as it was to write, I don't want to spend a lot of my time writing very similar child abuse scenes. But then, I may need plot to develop during one in the future, so I won't say for sure there won't be more. But we don't have to see this one, it is enough for me to tell you that Chilton did in fact use the cane.
> 
> Next chapter, we are going to have some special guests, both female, and Hannibal and Will will spend some time together.
> 
> (Also, Buster lived a long and happy life as Bella Crawford's personal lap warmer.)


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning, Matt took one look at Will’s exhausted frame, and shook his head. “Come on, we’re ditching class today.”

Will let out a derisive snort of laughter. “Yeah, that’s what I need, more quality time with Chilton.”

Matt waved him off, dragging him out of bed and shoving him towards his dresser. “Gideon owes me a favor. I’ll get him to testify that we’ve both got stomach bugs. Nobody actually works in the nurse’s office half the time, they won’t be expecting a note.”

“If we’re ditching class, why are you stripping me?” Will complained as Matthew yanked his T-shirt off and forced him into a sweater.

“Because I don’t have any Mary J left in my pillowcase, and you need a hit.”

“No I don’t,” Will protested. Matt continued to ignore him, forcing him into jeans. When he bent to tie Will’s shoes for him, Will gave up on pushing him away. “I’m not a toddler!” He insisted, bending to tie his own damn shoes.

“You certainly pout like one.”

“Fuck off,” Will said, without any real heat behind it.

“Nah, better things to do. Come on.”

They stopped by Gideon’s dorm room, first. Despite their regular transactions, he was apparently smart enough not to toke in his own room; it lacked the thick, distinctive smell that lingered in all of Will’s clothes now, even though he rarely partook in the month or so he’d been on campus.

After, Matt led Will down a path into the woods, to a groady shack that seemed to have been forgotten long before Will was even born. It was better aired out than their dorm room, but the odor was heavy in the air here, too. Matt dug a key out from under a bush (literally, buried beneath a thick layer of dirt and rock) and let them inside.

“I think it used to be a tool shed,” Matt explained, “Back when they had houses here instead of schools. There used to be a cabin another mile in, you can trip over the burnt-out foundations if you go hunting. They settled in on folding chairs that Matt had apparently salvaged from a dumpster his freshman year, and passed the joint back and forth. Will always felt more high when he smoked with others, like he was absorbing their hits as well as his own. Matt was no exception. Matt took to pot like a fish to water, deep inhales and chuckling exhales, smooth as breathing clean air. He was a mellow person by nature, but pot eased any rough edges that remained to him. Will had never liked pot before Matt, but Matt made it easy to unwind, no expectations, nothing to fear. No one else around to absorb.

It took some of the sting away, too, mostly because Will was too busy laughing at Matt’s faceplant when he leaned too far to reach for the joint.

“Field trip into town this upcoming weekend,” Matt finally said, once they’d both drowned in enough smoke to grease the wheels of small talk. “You gotta try the diner, the fries are outta sight.”

Will shook his head, taking another long drag and passing the joint.

“No bread?”

“Tapped out,” Will said, kicking ruefully at the dirt.

“Maybe next month-”

“Tapped. Out.” Will said, a little firmer this time. “This month, and next month, and every month until I leave school for the work force.”

Matt gave him a wary look and passed the joint back. “You need this more than I do, man.”

“I don’t need your _pity_ ,” Will insisted, but he took another hit anyway.

“Nah, but you need french fries and weed. Tell you what, I’ll buy you the fries- Don’t argue yet,” He added when Will opened his mouth, “I’ll buy you the fries, and you play delivery boy for a few rounds. That way you earn it. Deal?”

Will thought about it for a moment. He knew what Matt was trying to do. He suspected Matt would happily just _give_ him the fries. But Will had been raised to shun charity, and he really did want to go.

“Deal,” He said, holding out his hand to shake.

\----

There was a pretty little thing waiting at the bus stop, long blond hair and shapely legs in a knee-length navy dress and blindingly white boots. Matt grabbed Will’s arm and yanked him off to the side, just far enough away to be covert while still getting a good look at the girl.

“Watch this,” Matt hissed as Lecter stepped off the bus. The girl offered Lecter a small smile, with very little warmth to it. Her frostiness was no deterrent to a boy as icy as Lecter. He took her hand and pressed a soft kiss to the back of it, and they walked off together. Matt turned to Will with an eyebrow raised

“You’re kidding me,” Will said.

“Nope.”

“Lecter? _Hannibal_ Lecter? Has an old lady like _that?”_

“The very same.”

“He’s wearing a _paisley tie_. On a _Saturday._ ”

“Man, I don’t know what chicks are into these days. Maybe paisley does it for all of them and we’re just wasting our time. But Lecter takes the trip every chance he gets, and she’s always here waiting for him.” Matt dropped his voice to a whisper with a lecherous grin, “Do you think they’ve made it?”

“What?”

“You know, ‘it.’ Do you think Lecter’s nailing that?”

“Oh. _Oh._ ” Will groaned, shaking his head. “You’re disgusting.”

“I’m just curious! Who wouldn’t be, right? Rumor has it that Lecter sneaks her into his dorm room sometimes. I heard a freshman caught them necking in the biology lab once.”

Will rolled his eyes. “You really think Lecter’s dumb enough to get caught necking? By _freshmen?”_

Matt sighed, disappointed. “You’re right. He’s probably saving it for marriage anyway.”

That wasn’t exactly what Will had meant either, but he was happy to put the subject to rest. “I handed off baggies to all your little friends. You promised me fries.”

Matt scoffed as he led him down the street, in the opposite direction from where Lecter and his pretty girl had wandered. “Those people aren’t my friends, they’re my customers. It’s purely a business transaction.”

“Where the hell are you growing all this stuff, anyway?”

Matt grinned widely. “Wouldn’t _you_ like to know?”

\-----

The fries were good. They weren’t ‘become a drug dealer in your spare time’ good, but they were good. The milkshake was better, even though Will hadn’t ordered it and had tried to argue Matt out of it.

“Alright,” Matt said when they were finished, “Remember you questioning my business earlier? Well, I actualy have to go handle that right now. You need pocket money to entertain yourself for a bit?” There was sincerity in his eyes, but he kept his tone light, mocking. Letting Will turn him down and save face.

“Go to hell,” Will told him, a small smile of his own.

They parted ways outside the diner, Matt heading down the street and Will across it, towards the park. He still had a couple of hours to kill before he had to be back on the bus, and he intended to kill it in peace.

Despite his misgivings, he was glad he’d come out today. Will settled himself into the shade of a tree and sighed, leaning against it. He thought he might take a nap, but he’d barely closed his eyes when a shadow crossed over his face, blocking out the little bit of sunlight that had warmed him.

“Are you from the school? The boy’s boarding school.” Will blinked up at the girl. She was a tiny little thing, maybe 9 or 10 years old, in high waisted jeans and a bright red, paisley blouse. Her long dark hair had been tied into low pigtails, and she plopped herself down into the grass next to him. “I haven’t seen you here before,” She added, “And I know everyone in town.” She sprawled out gracelessly on the ground, the loose-limbed casualty of youth. She wore the yellowing bruises and grass-stained knees of a child who played hard, with little care.

“Yeah,” Will said, straightening up. “Yeah, I go to the boy’s school.”

The little girl giggled. “You talk funny,” She said.

Will frowned and hunched in on himself. “I don’t,” He insisted, with as much northern inelegance as he could put into it.

“S’okay,” The girl said, “You talk like my Nana. It’s a good funny.”

As a fifteen year old boy, Will was not any more pleased to be compared to someone’s Nana, but the little girl was already off onto her next point of attack. She thrust her hand out at Will’s chest, too close for a proper handshake, but he managed one anyway.

“Abigail Hobbs,” She told him.

“Will Graham.”

“Will Graham,” She repeated, affecting both his drawl and a deeper tone of voice, one that only served to warp her childish glee as opposed to sounding at all masculine.

“My brother goes to the boy’s school,” Abigail tells him. “I’m going to go to the girl’s school, when I’m bigger. We meet here on field trip days.”

Will frowned, took her in again. _Hobbs_. His mind trickled backwards, until he could envision a guant-faced boy with an unfortunate hairline, hovering just behind Tier’s shoulder. Will did a quick perimeter check, but when Garrett Jacob Hobbs failed to materialize at Abigail’s side, he relaxed. “Why aren’t you with your brother, then?” He asked, “Didn’t he make it?” He hadn’t paid much attention to the other boys on the bus, after all, filled with a nervous excitement that overwhelmed his other senses.

Abigail leaned back in the grass, staring up into the sky. Her eyes, vibrant and pure, went empty and hollow. “I just needed a break,” She said, voice soft.

In that moment, Will saw the things he had missed, connected dots that had merely been loose points of information. The playful bruises of childhood shifted, became a hand around Abigail’s wrist, too tight, too severe. Possessive. Needy. The puzzle pieces snap together.

_We meet every time the bus comes into town, because I cannot bear to be away from her._

_I’m the older one, the responsible one. Our parents are distant. I raise her. She is **mine**. _

_Every minute we are apart is a constant ache. It twists and hurts, festering. When I see her again, I am so **angry.**_

_It’s not her fault, but I can’t help it. There is no other outlet._

Another person might have let sympathy override sense, but Will had been on the other side of bruises before. Abigail would find any show of pity as abhorrent and awkward as it would have felt on Will’s tongue. Instead, Will drew on a childhood sprawled out in the grass with ‘cousins’ who shared not a drop of his blood, and plucked a flower from the grass. “Have you ever made daisy chains, Abigail?”

The hollow look dropped, painted over with a brilliant grin. As it turned out, Abigail had, and hers came out better than Will. Will let her overshadow him with a child’s exhuberant pride, allowing Abigail to guide his hands when they were too large and clumsy to properly thread the stems. She drapped her flower circlet in his hair with a little giggle, twining the stems through his curls. He let her have at it, sitting patiently as she added a few extra tiny wildflowers, tucking one behind his ears.

“You’re nice,” Abigail declared, after about a half-hour of styling, “Will you come play with me again?”

“Sure,” Will agreed, although he privately doubted he’d make it on any more trips; he could not continue to accept Matt’s money, even if he technically ‘earned’ it.

“Abigail!” The call came deep and sharp from across the park. Hobbs had found them, although thankfully, he was traveling without the rest of his unruly gang. Abigail looked fearful for maybe half a second, the slihtest widening of her eyes. Will only saw it because he was looking for it. She bolted with a cheery wave towards Will, scurrying across the field to Hobbs’s side, babbling something Will was too far away to hear.

Hobbs glared at him over Abigail’s shoulder. Will ammended his profile, knwoing, without quite knowing _how_ …

_I would kill her before I would lose her._

\-----

It was too much to hope that the day would continue to go well. Will only had an hour before he had to be back at the bus stop, but he should have known that where Hobbs went, the rest could not be far behind.

Randall Tier came at him from behind the tree, after Abigail Hobbs had vanished from sight and Will had let drowsiness overtake him once more. He drew Will up with a tight grip on his hair and an arm around his neck, constricting his throat. Hidden from view by the rest of Tier’s pack, Will was dragged slowly backwards into an alley.

“We’ve got business to take care of, you and me,” Tier whispered into Will’s ear, “No interruptions this time.” The other boys, minus Hobbs but still outnumbering Will three-to-one, smirked.

Will did the only sensible thing he _could_ do, when surrounded by boys bigger and broader than him: He smacked his head backwards, hard enough to draw a pained scream from behind him, and ran like a terrified rabbit. He just barely made it passed the arms that reached for him, taking advantage of his small stature to dive underneath grasping hands.

“Come back here, you coward!” Tier yelled after him. Will kept running. It wasn’t like he had much of a reputation to defend, to begin with.

Will was a scrawny little thing, and he knew it, but he ran fast. Years of bolting over fences with arms full of stolen apples and ears of corn paid off, in the long run. He darted down alleys and around corners, and did not come to a stop until fate stepped in and forced him down.

All the best restaurants, the ones that Will had always known he would never be able to afford, no matter how many little baggies he delivered, had outdoor seating. They let the scent of their wares drift out onto the streets, a cruel torture for a hungry child. Will had been fed a lot more recently than he was used to, but he was also a growing boy, and had just run several blocks at his top speed. The scent distracted him, turning his head. Looking to the side instead of towards his feet, Will tripped right over a bag that had been set to theside of one of the chairs, tumbling to the ground in a flurry of gangly limbs.

“Will?”

Great. Perfect. Practically idyllic. Will winced and stared up at the two people whose meal he had interrupted.

The girl looked down at him through a curtain of blonde hair, hands folded primly in her lap. He couldn’t quite see up her skirt from this angle, not that he was rude enough to try, but Will hastened to force his gaze closer to her eyes, just to be safe. She was frowning at him, with a curious expression most people reserved for particularly tricky crossword puzzles. It made Will feel indecently exposed, although not as exposed as he felt when he turned his head to the table’s other occupant.

If the girl looked amused, Hannibal Lecter looked concerned. He was up before Will could process him fully, tugging Will to his feet with two hands braced firmly under his arms. He was unreasonably strong, in addition to the height difference, and Will felt uncomfortably like a child as he was settled into the seat Lecter had just vacated.

“You’ve been running,” Lecter murmured, “Has Tier been following you again?”

Will was not about to fink on a boy who already wanted to wear his teeth as trophies, but neither did he have anything prepared to say. Instead, he ended up gaping like a fish, seeking and failing to find the excuse that would rescue him from this disaster.

If anything, Lecter’s frown only grew. “You’ll stay with us until the bus comes,” He declared, pushing his glass of water towards Will. Will imagined Lecter’s girl would protest, and ended up sorely disappointed when she merely watched them both with a raised eyebrow.

“I can’t intrude on your date,” Will said, pushing to his feet. Or trying to. Lecter pressed him back into the seat with almost no pressure at all, just a firm push of his hands.

“Nonsense, Bedelia won’t mind,” Bedelia, in fact, looked like she minded quite a bit, but only in the sense that Will appeared to be amusing her greatly, and she would very much like to continue to mind until she exhausted whatever it was that fascinated her.

“I mind-” Will attempted to insist, but Lecter had not been listening to him before, and was not about to start now.

“I’m going to step inside and see to ordering you a meal, you need nourishing.” Lecter was gone before Will could make another attempt at protesting, a whirlwind of a boy, too quick and too stubborn for Will to catch hold of.

“Let him.”

The voice was soft, deepened with good humor and even better poise. Will had been too far to hear her before, when she’d met Hannibal at the bus stop, but now Bedelia captured his full attention. She watched him with a faint air of amusement, growing more pronounced in direct proportion to Will’s relative level of discomfort.

“I can’t just let him-”

“You can, and you should,” Bedelia interrupted, “He’ll only continue to fuss until you surrender, and it’s tiresome. He dislikes seeing hunger in any source. Let him feed you, and he’ll be a bit easier to handle.”

It seemed that Will was doomed to spend his entire day with people who disregarded his own whims. It felt like a bit of a waste of a Saturday, if you asked him, but nobody ever did. He sank low in his chair, a bit too low to really be polite, and watched a flicker of irritation flicker over Bedelia’s face.

“You must be Will Graham, then,” She said, startling Will enough that he straightened ever so slightly. “Bedelia Du Maurier.” She held out her hand. It was rougher than Will was expecting, calloused and strong. She shook hands like a man, with more truly-felt confidence than Will could ever hope to fake.

“I’m not sure I understand the appeal,” Bedelia said, after a painfully long silence. Will was instantly on the defensive.

“The appeal of _what_ , exactly?”

Bedelia rolled her eyes. “If you’re even the slightest bit as intuitive as Hannibal seems to think you are, you’ll have noticed by now.”

“Lecter talks about me?”

That got an unimpressed eyebrow lift. Bedelia leaned back in her seat, far more composed than when Will had done the same. “Hannibal is _obsessed_ with you,” She said, and left that information out on the table for Will to interpret. He ran it through his mind, searching for filters that might help it to make sense, and found none.

“Lecter doesn’t even know me,” Will finally replied.

“One would think that to be the key to fascination, not a disqualifier. We covet that which we don’t have. We are curious about those we do not yet understand.”

“Curiosity is not the same as fascination,” Will countered.

“And yet here we are,” Bedelia said, gesturing to the table. “I feel as if I’ve been circling you myself, for all I’ve been told. I wonder what it is that attracts him to you? If perhaps he sees something in you that reflects something in him?”

Will’s heart thudded in his chest. Bedelia looked into him, through him. He felt like he could feel the sharp prick of her long nails digging about in his skull, looking for sore spots to poke. Secrets to prod at, things Will had never told anyone.

“I’m not queer.” The words stumbled out, spilling from Will’s lips like oil, slick and impossible to hold back. Defensive.

Bedelia smiled wide, with all of her teeth, like she could see the truth. Like she had walked backwards with Will, into those dark crevices in his mind, hollow aches and formless dreams haunting his adolescence.

“Neither is Hannibal.”

_\-----_

Hannibal, who insisted on being known as such as opposed to ‘Lecter,’ had returned with a rather large platter of pasta and another glass of water. He’d then stared pointedly until Will ate it, dispersing the tension with typical small talk about classes and weather. Mostly, Will let Hannibal and Bedelia talk; if food was going to be forced upon him, he was damn sure going to enjoy it.

Hannibal had also insisted upon escorting Will back to the bus stop, although Bedelia excused herself from the excursion. She left Hannibal with a kiss to the cheek and a whisper too soft for Will to catch. Hannibal returned the favor in kind, and Will found himself looking away, unaccostomed to the intimacy.

“I’m aware I may have been a bit forward,” Hannibal admitted as they walked.

“Your old lady said you have a compulsive need to feed people.”

Hannibal grinned. It looked unfamiliar on his face, no ice to restrict it. “She may have phrased it a bit differently.”

“Yeah,” Will said, “I was a lot nicer.”

“That _does_ sound like dear Bedelia.”

Will fidgeted with the hem of his shirt, mulling things over. He could say nothing. Saying nothing was often easier. Safer. Smarter. What would he be accusing Hannibal of, if he spoke? If it came across wrong?

“Do you talk about me?” Was what eventually forced his way out, “To Bedelia, I mean.”

A trickle of cold seemed to rest over their shoulders. “She speaks out of turn,” Hannibal finally said. “She may have thoguht it a kindness. She does have a tendency towards worry. I merely expressed my concerns about you. I’m afraid your current feud is a constant source of gossip. I told Bedelia that I feared it might take a rough turn.”

“Oh.” Of course it would be as simple as that. Hannibal was a prefect, after all. It was natural that he would want to keep an eye on any potential violence. It should have lifted the weight from Will’s chest. Instead, it added to it.

“I don’t think you’re a trouble maker,” Hannibal hastened to assure him, “My fear is _for_ you, Will, not _of_ you.”

“Oh,” Will said again, graceless and inelegant. “That’s… Thank you? I guess? I mean, it’s not like I go seeking trouble. It just seems to, to find me.”

“Tail wagging and eager for your attention,” Hannibal agreed, drawing a smile to Will’s lips.

“More often than not.” They turned the corner to the bus stop then, and Will hesitated a moment.

“Thanks,” He said, “For the meal, I mean. And for sticking with me on the way back.”

“Will...” Hannibal reached out and placed a hand on Will’s shoulder. His touch was warm, solid. It stiffened Will, called back to that moment of terror with Bedelia. _Perhaps he sees something in you._ “Should you need help, you need only ask.”

“I’ll remember that,” Will told him, “Thanks.” Down the block, Matt spotted him and started to wave, freezing in his tracks when he realized who Will was with. “I’d better go.”

“If you must.” It was said softly, so soft Will thought he might not have heard it at all. Will scurried off, and tried not to think about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's bad form as an author to admit this, but I've definitely tripped and fallen over the time line. Will is explicitely stated to have come in partway through the school year, but it's warm enough in Virginia that they're smoking pot outside? But cold enough that Will is wearing a sweater? But warm enough that he and Abigail made daisy chains? I fucked up there, I own it. Later, when it's not so late at night, I will go back and tweak the earlier chapters to make it more clear when the hell this is taking place, but let's assume for now that it's probably very early spring? Like, late March/Early April sort of thing. just after the flowers come back, but before it stops being chilly. Always have an outline, kiddos! Don't be like Strats, whose outline features such gems as 'THIS IS MY SHOUTY JACK VOICE' and 'Hannibal you're his bitch now,' but has absolutely no notes on how much time has passed between each event.
> 
> Y'all I have never smoked pot in my life. I am super boring. I tried.
> 
> So. Bedelia. My first thought was 'how the hell am I going to work her in, if they go to an all-boys school?' But the second I figured it out, I fell in love with this scene and could not wait to write it. Bedelia knows what's up, guys, and she's torn between warning Will and picking at all his scabs. I love Bedelia.
> 
> Also, Abigail. IDK if either of the girls is likely to turn up again, but Abigail's interactions with Will are going to have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the fic. Plus, I like Abigail and couldn't resist throwing her in. 
> 
> Also also, THEY TALKED. LIKE, IN ACTUAL SENTENCES. NOT ABOUT A DOG. Hannibal is not pleased with Bedelia because he is DEFINITELY just a little bit hot for Will, and has no way of knowing how Will will take that. But that's okay because Will is in a closet buried deep beneath a river in Egypt, and isn't going to dig his way out for quite a bit yet.
> 
> Next time. OMG guys next time. A dog, Chilton being an ass, and the plot finally deigns to show up.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, warnings can be found in the end note.

That Will would find another dog was simply inevitable. That it came on a bad day, when Will was huddled in a sweater and limping along after another detention, was merely a relief.

This dog was of a more impressive size than the previous one, a good medium-sized mutt with a dozen colors sprawled across his coat and a ratty rope trailing from his neck. Underfed and undergroomed. This one, Will did not find in the woods, but on campus, nosing around the dumpster behind the cafeteria.

“Won’t find anything good in there, mon chèr,” Will murmured, dropping to his knees on the dirty ground. It would mean an extra round in the laundry room, but Will didn’t pretend to care.

The dog skirted Will, avoiding his touch and his gaze with soft little whimpers. Will had to disappear into the cafeteria itself and return with a few extra treats shoved under his shirt before the mutt would so much as sniff him.

“There you go,” Will cooed as the dog licked hot dog remnants from Will’s fingertips. “There’s a good boy. There’s more where that came from.” He fed the dog every bit he had, then let him lick at Will’s hands and his shirt until he seemed satisfied, curling up with his head in Will’s lap. Only then did Will attempt to coax the rope from his neck, with careful, gentle tugs.

“I won’t be able to sneak you into the bathroom,” Will mused, picking dirt clumps and sticks from the dog’s fur with his fingers, “Much too big. What shall I do with you, chèr?”

The dog did not reply, beyond a pleased little snuffle against Will’s thigh, satisfied with Will’s soft touches and words of praise.

He wouldn’t fit in the dorm room, but then, there were other places on campus to hide a dog…

Matthew’s cabin was cozy, despite the chill that was beginning to settle over Virginia. It sheltered them both from the storm, and the dog seemed fascinated by the old, sagging couch that someone had long ago abandoned inside. Will tucked him into a nest of blankets there, scraps of fabric he’d liberated from the linen closet while the dog sat hidden behind his dorm.

“Winston,” Will decided, scratching softly behind the dog’s ear. “It’s a good name, don’t you think, boy?”

The dog was decidedly well behaved. He did not bark or growl, although he did lick a damp stripe up the side of Will’s cheek. Will took that as agreement.

Winston, and the shack, became Will’s safe space. He snuck out to the woods daily now, squirreling away extra bites of food, picking half-eaten morsels from abandoned trays. Winston flourished under the attention, although Will still would have liked to give him a bath.

The thing about breaking the rules every single day, however, was that you would eventually get caught.

“It’s barely five minutes!” Will protested as Budge hauled him along down the hall, a tight grip around his upper arm.

“Five minutes past curfew is still past curfew,” Budge informed him, as cold and distant as he’d been when he cornered Will on the front stoop. “It’s still five minutes I had to waste looking for you, instead of heading off to my own comfortable bed.”

“Who’d you have to pay to get one of those?” Will sassed back, because why _wouldn’t_ he dig himself deeper, given the chance?

“I’m sure Mr. Budge has better things to do than to listen to your mouth, Mr. Graham.”

Chilton’s office door had been wide open, although he surely had better things to do than to linger on campus so late on a Thursday. But Chilton, Will had noticed, did not seem to have a life outside of Fuller Prep. He was always around, always lurking. Presumably, he had an apartment off campus, but Will had spotted him both well past curfew and at the crack of dawn. There were rumors he slept in his desk chair, eyes open, watching for trouble makers. Rumors that Will was beginning to believe.

“He’s been out past curfew four times this week,” Budge informed Chilton, startling the hell out of Will, who had believed himself to be in the clear, and who had only been late _three_ times that week, thank you very much. But that was probably not a winning argument.

Budge deposited Will in a chair, giving Chilton a nod and dismissing himself. Chilton shut the door behind him and turned on Will with an uncomfortably wide smile.

“Well. You never do learn, do you, Mr. Graham. Two weeks since our last meeting. You’re setting a new record for troublemakers in this school.”

“And here I thought you were enjoying our time together,” Will remarked with a vague, false smile of his own. Each and every time they did this, Will tried to keep the upper hand, and each and every time, he folded under his humiliation and shame.

Chilton sighed, straightening up and dragging a chair to the middle of the room. “Today of all days, Mr. Graham,” He murmured, and the fact that he knew, when Will had told no one, when he would have had to study Will’s file, sent a chill through Will. There was no reason for him to know. “Come along now, don’t waste my time. You know what I want from you.”

Will went, slowly, hesitantly. As anxious now, at the start, as he usually was at the end.

“I think you’ve chosen a good number for yourself. Sixteen for the birthday boy, shall we?”

\-----

Will didn’t return to his room. He should have, of course. It was what Chilton told him to do, with an overly friendly pat to the shoulder. He’d shoved a _chocolate bar_ into Will’s hands, telling him that even trouble makers should have a treat on their birthday. It had made Will feel dirty. He’d thrown the bar into the trash and then cried because he could not afford to replace it, because it was the only gift he’d gotten, because he ached in a thousand different ways beyond just the physical.

If he had told Matt, Matt would have used the opportunity to foist more charity on Will, and Will had been unable to make himself stomach it. But his dad, at least… They had no money, but Will had held out hope for a letter. It would have been the first letter, if his dad had bothered to send one. He hadn’t.

Will’s dorm room held the echo of false hopes and empty promises. Children of alcoholics learned young to expect very little, but Will had watched his father drink away their change for years, and still found himself expecting something better. Insanity was doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results.

Will thought of Matt’s overeager friendship, of pity in his eyes, and went towards the woods instead.

Winston was happy to see him, if a bit confused. Will never came twice in one day, after all. Less chance to be followed and found out.

“Let’s go for a walk, shall we, boy?”

The air was cold, and the night was dark. The thick canopy of trees shielded Will from the elements but did not entirely block out the brightness of a full moon. In time, Will’s eyes adjusted, and he let himself trip further and further into the woods. He wouldn’t get lost. He knew the world too well for that, could have followed his own tracks in worse weather than a cloudless night. Still, Will entertained the thought. He could disappear, another victim lost to the woods, another body unclaimed. They’d never find him. He’d live out his days with Winston, huddled together for warmth through the winter, fishing their food from the rivers that ran through the trees. He could do it.

Something slid through the brush ahead of him. Too big to be a snake. Footsteps, too. Too small to be a bear. Too heavy for deer, for dogs. A sliver of foreboding sliced its way into the back of Will’s mind, a hint of fear, a warning to flee.

Will was sixteen. He was hurting, and angry, and his face was still reddened and damp from crying. No wild animal would be enough to send him back to his dorm in such a state, and his curiosity overwhelmed whatever little self-preservation adulthood was attempting to beckon him with.

The monster of the woods, the creature that lurked with sharpened nails and the horns of a stag, antlers to pin its prey, fangs to tear out their organs in big, gulping bites. After Crawford had mentioned it, Will had looked into the story. Half man, half beast, a trail of tar-black feathers, eyes that glinted in the moonlight. For a moment, he imagined he could see it, huge and dark, stalking through the night with the clip clop of hooves.

Then, he stumbled another few feet into the clearing, and saw the body instead.

The body was not the important thing, not really, although it drew Will’s attention immediately. The important thing was the boy crouched over it, knife in hand, slicing open the belly. There was a shovel a few feet away, but that did not draw Will’s eyes with the same immediacy as the blood, black in the moonlight and leaking out from the wound. It flowed slowly, seeping the way blood did when the heart no longer forced it out in rhythmic pulses, but the body had not yet frozen.

Hannibal Lecter looked up, bloodied up to his wrist, knife still pressed to the body, and met Will’s eyes.

“Oh my god, that’s Miggs.” It was a stupid thing to say. In all honesty, probably the dumbest thing Will could have managed. The body, after all, was not important, had stopped being important when the heartbeat stopped and whatever made a human being had fled. The knife, that was what was important. The knife, and the look in Hannibal’s eyes.

Hannibal stared at him, sharp eyed, angry at being caught, and Will knew. Will’s thoughts from earlier, half-joking, half-dream, came back to him in a rush. Will was going to disappear, tonight. Hannibal Lecter was going to slice that knife through his belly, and Will would never be seen again.

Then, Hannibal’s head tilted. Recognition bloomed on his face. The knife dropped, half an inch, the tiniest of motions.

Will ran.

He could hear Winston barking, trailing after him in leaps and bounds. A part of him wanted to worry, but he knew Winston was safe. A dog, after all, could not go to the school, or to the cops. A dog would never repeat what it had saw. Will was the immediate threat, and it was Will the footsteps followed.

Hannibal was quick, and quiet. Will strained to hear him over the thump of his own heart, the harsh gasps of his own breath. The rustle of leaves could have been the wind. The snap of a twig might be the carelessness of a squirrel.

A heavy weight barreled into him from the side, tumbling Will to the ground. Hannibal shoved him face-first into the dirt, struggling to yank Will’s wrists behind his back. He wrenched hard enough to draw a yowl of pain from Will, before Will managed to roll him off.

Hannibal was bigger, broader. He had several inches and at least fifteen pounds of muscle over Will’s scrawny frame. But Will was a scrapper, always had been. When Hannibal’s hands found his shoulders and shoved Will back down, Will sank his teeth into Hannibal’s forearm.

He could taste blood, though whether it belonged to Hannibal or the corpse, Will couldn’t say. He bit down harder, until Hannibal got a fistful of curls and reared back, smacking Will’s head against the ground.

The world spun. Will’s ears were ringing, and an unbearable nausea twisted his stomach. He tried to remember how to breath. If he gave up, if he let the feelings overtake him, he would be dead.

“I’m sorry,” Hannibal murmured, as he drew back. The bizarre thing, and perhaps it was only the concussion speaking, was that he sounded genuine. Hannibal reached for the knife, and Will made sure he found it pressed against his throat instead.

They were both still. Will, because the world had not yet stopped moving, and Hannibal, because Will had drawn a thin bead of blood from his throat. They were both panting. Just outside of Will’s sight, Winston growled.

“You disarmed me,” Hannibal murmured, sounding far more pleased than Will thought he should.

“You murdered at least two people,” Will replied, “I thought it was better to be cautious.”

Hannibal laughed, even as Will berated himself for his mouth. “You’re certain of your count? There’s only one body in the woods tonight.”

“If you try to tell me Mason Verger got lost on his own last month, I’ll cut deeper,” Will warned, tightening his grip on the knife. Hannibal smiled, all teeth and vicious glee.

“You _are_ a wonder, Will Graham,” He said. “I suppose I’ll be calling my lawyer, then?”

Will knew, of course, that the second they stood up, the second he let his guard down for even a second, Hannibal was going to kill him. For some reason, none of that came spilling from his mouth. Instead, he found himself saying, “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

That gleeful look of Hannibal’s faltered slightly, transitioning inelegantly to confused offense.

“I dislike being lied to, Will.”

“Yeah, well, I dislike being body slammed into a tree root, so I guess we’re even.”

“I _did_ apologize,” Hannibal pointed out, as if that made it any better. “Surely you can see that you gave me very little choice.”

“I see a lot of things,” Will told him, “I see you. Clearly, now. Actually, this kind of explains a lot.”

“Does it?”

Will shrugged, awkwardly, unable to move much without risking Hannibal’s slow exsanguination. “Nobody’s perfect, Hannibal. You try too hard.”

Hannibal gave him a small, crooked smile. “No one’s ever told me that before.”

“A word of advice, when you’re trying to blend in with other humans: Teenage boys do not wear pocket squares.”

“I’ll make a note of it.”

They stared at each other for a long moment.

“If we’re not going to fight any longer,” Hannibal finally said, “I’d like to be able to take deep breaths again.”

“I’d like to get up off the ground,” Will countered, “You move first. And I’m keeping the knife.”

“I hope not permanently,” Hannibal mused as he stood, holding out a hand to help Will to his feet, “I’m fond of that one.”

“At least until you don’t have access to my back.” Now that they were both standing, Winston crept from his hiding place, sniffing at Will, checking him over. Will gave him a reassuring pat, still glaring at Hannibal.

“Dear Will, if I ever decide to stab you, I promise you’ll know it’s coming.”

Will straightened up to his full height, brushing dirt from his clothes. To his surprise, Hannibal stepped forward to help, straightening Will’s ratty sweater with a disapproving frown.

“Don’t judge me,” Will warned, voice full of venom, “You bury bodies in the woods, I can wear a cheap sweater if I want to."

“You’re really not going to tell anyone?” Hannibal’s voice was far softer than Will was used to, almost hopeful. Will stared at him, surprised at the eagerness that stared back.

It must have been lonely, being Hannibal. He was a bit of a pretentious ass, stuck-up and a little arrogant, from what Will had seen. And there was a darkness to him that didn’t belong in the eyes of a teenage boy, in anyone so young. Will imagined him reaching out, searching for someone to understand, before finally closing himself off with the ice he always seemed to take with him.

Murder was a bit of an overreaction to social isolation, though. Still, Will thought about it. Miggs was known, around campus, much in the way Tier was known, the way Will was known; More for the blackest parts of his soul than for himself. Although, truth be told, there was not much else to Miggs beyond the blackness.

Mason Verger had been young, but Will heard there had been stories of his cruelty even before he’d come to campus. Will himself had watched Mason saunter through his fellow freshman with a pen knife and a false smile, sharp-edged and venomous.

Then there was Hannibal. Good looking, wealthy, straight-A prefect. Loved by teachers and peers alike.

And what was Will doing out there, alone in the dark? Covered in dirt, always in trouble, always sneaking off. No alibi.

It would take very little for Hannibal to turn the whole thing back on Will, but if he hadn’t figured that out for himself, Will was not going to tell him. There really was only one option.

“Who would I tell?”

Hannibal looked at Will with a relief that was painful to look at. A wary sort of joy, a small smile that Will could not help but mimic.

“I do still need to bury our dear friend Miggs,” Hannibal murmured. “I could use someone to hold the light.”

Fuck, Will was in over his head.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains: Chilton WAYYY upping his creep factor. I maintain that his interest in Will is not sexual (although you could interpret it that way, it's just not my intent), but he's definitely focused specifically on Will as opposed to being an ass to all children (although he's that, too). An off-screen murder with an on-screen corpse. A physical fight between Hannibal and Will. Will's bad decision-making skills. And a terrible way to spend a birthday.
> 
> I don't have as much to say this time around! Chilton is a major fucking creep and I can't wait to write what happens with him. Mason Verger died a horrible, painful death, long before his father had a chance to rewrite his will, and therefor Margo inherits everything. Winston is awesome and probably would have bitten Hannibal if he'd gotten the upper hand. And Hannibal is so fucking in love he can't see straight.
> 
> (Will, on the other hand, is an anxious mess who's pretty sure he's gonna get framed for murder eventually.)
> 
> See you next time!


	6. Chapter 6

They didn’t talk about it, at first. In fact, Will spent three entire days completely avoiding Hannibal and waiting for the other shoe to drop. When Gideon found him after class and told him Crawford was looking for him, Will could barely hear him over the roaring rush of blood that pulsed through him, terror and panic overwhelming him and squeezing tight at his lungs.

_This is it,_ Will thought to himself, _This is prison, this is the electric chair._ He hadn’t turned Hannibal in, after all. Had helped him to bury the body, had touched it with his _hands_ to lower it in, and he could still feel the tacky, sticky residue that had clung to his hands, the brownish-black of drying blood. Will lowered himself into the chair and stared at Headmaster Crawford’s desk without seeing, without knowing. He felt unmoored.

“Dr. Chilton tells me you’ve been in trouble again,” The headmaster said, in a low, even tone that Will could not translate. “And again. And once more after that. In fact, I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t hear about you, Mr. Graham.”

For a moment, relief. Profound, intense. Will was dizzy with it. Not the police, not a murder charge. Just Chilton, obsessing again.

The relief vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Will folded in on himself, hunched over in the chair, arms tight across his chest. He knew already that any defense he might come up with was unlikely to be believed. Nobody ever believed those who were on the wrong side of 18. Will shrugged instead.

“When you came into my office with your dog, we discussed finding another outlet for your pent-up energy, didn’t we?”

Will shrugged again. His answer hadn’t changed. In fact, he was feeling even _less_ inclined to show-and-tell now that he knew the monster of the forest slept two floors down from him.

“Look at me when I’m speaking to you!” Headmaster Crawford’s hand smacked against the thick wood of his desk, hard enough that Will jumped and stared at him with wide, startled eyes. “Another boy has gone missing, Mr. Graham.”

Will wanted to throw up. Instead, he forced his jaw to unclench. “I don’t know what that has to do with me.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, boy. It may have worked on teachers you’ve had before, but I’ve had my eye on you since your application first crossed my desk. You see things, don’t you? Understand them. You make leaps you can’t explain.”

“The _evidence_ explains,” Will insisted, “I just interpret it.”

“Then find me some evidence.”

As if it was that easy. Well, in a way, it was, since Will had tripped right over the body. “I don’t do anything the police wouldn’t do.”

Crawford dismissed that with a short shake of his head. “The police have already come and gone. They found nothing. They never do. But they don’t live here. They don’t spend all their spare time skulking around these buildings, these trees.”

The click of understanding. It ached, as it always did. Will hated knowing the things he knew, pinned under the weight of understanding, of isolation. “You don’t think they’ve wandered off.”

Crawford eyed him carefully. “Do you?”

Will shook his head and rephrased, “You think another student did something.”

“I think there’s a lot going on around this campus that I don’t see,” Crawford said, “I think that a few years ago, if we lost one boy to the trees, it was a bad year. We’ve lost two before the trees have entirely lost their leaves. I don’t believe in coincidences, Mr. Graham, and neither do you.”

“You don’t know what I believe,” Will told him, “You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I know that you’ve seen something.”

The floor fell out from under Will. He kept his face steady, even as sweat flooded his underarms, his elbows, the backs of his knees. He tried to remember how to breath.

“Maybe you don’t realize it,” Crawford continued, “Maybe you don’t understand yet, what you saw. But you know something, Mr. Graham,  and I intend to find out what.”

\-----  
The conversation had gone downhill from there, as had the rest of Will’s day. When he finally slipped away to spend some much-needed time with Winston, Hannibal was already there, kneeling by the shack and feeding Winston cuts of meat from a paper bag.

“How did you find this place?” Will asked warily, keeping his distance. The shack was far enough from the school that he did not put it past Hannibal to attempt another round of ‘hide the body.’

Hannibal rolled his eyes. “You can smell Matthew Brown’s hideaways from miles away. _You_ can, and my nose is a touch stronger than most.”

Will flushed; it was not only Matthew who had been smoking here, after all.

“Okay, next question. Why?”

“You’ve been avoiding me, Will.”

“You haven’t exactly tried to hunt me down,” Will pointed out, “Until now, obviously.”

“I know where I’m not wanted,” Hannibal said, “But I can’t help my curiosity. Why haven’t the police come for me, Will?”

Will shrugged, wrapping his arms around himself. “I told you before that I wasn’t going to say anything. If you didn’t believe me, you shouldn’t have let me leave.”

“And yet, I did,” Hannibal mused, “And you kept your promise, as I knew you would. Yet I still don’t know _why.”_ He stopped, then, taking in the way the breeze ruffled Will’s curls and the ratty edges. “Forgive me, Will, you’re chilled. Step inside, we should have taken shelter from the start.”

“There’s no heat in there,” Will protested.

“There are walls, though, and that will do a great deal to fight the wind.”

Much to Will’s surprise, the door opened immediately under Hannibal’s touch, without either of them needing to root for the key. Hannibal had picked the lock, then, and Will’s wariness spiked right back up.

“You first,” He said, fishing for Hannibal’s knife, safely folded into Will’s pocket.

Hannibal gave him a smirk, and a nod. “Of course, Will.”

Inside, there was no trap, that Will could see. What there was, was a folding table and chairs set, and a chocolate birthday cake, with Will’s name carefully scrawled across it in beautiful, careful handwriting.

Will froze in the doorway, staring at the cake as if it might leap up and bite him. Hannibal took a seat, still smirking.

“I’m not going to poison you, Will,” He said with a small chuckle, “I wouldn’t do that to the food.”

Will sat, against his better judgement, numb with shock as Hannibal cut them both generous pieces. “Why…?”

“It has occurred to me that perhaps the other day was _not_ your idea of a proper celebration,” Hannibal said wryly. “I thought I might attempt to make it up to you.”

Will waited until Hannibal had taken a bite before he bit into his own slice and moaned. He closed his eyes, lost in the flavor for a moment. He’d only rarely had chocolate, to begin with. His childhood had not been filled with spare pocket money for sweets. Birthday cakes had been rarer. He could recall a single lopsided pastry, when his mother had still been around, the only vivid memory Will had of her. The year before he’d come here, his father had given him a beer, which had made Will want to vomit. This, though, was twice the sweetness he’d had in his youth, with three times the skill. Will took another hasty bite, eager enough that the amused look on Hannibal’s face couldn’t deter him.

“Where did you get this?”

“If you’re not prone to trouble, and you supply your own ingredients, the school chefs will allow you to use the kitchen during off hours.”

Will paused, fork poised halfway to his mouth. “You _made_ this?”

Hannibal raised an eyebrow. “Is that so unbelievable?”

Will took in Hannibal’s neatly pressed slacks, the white button-down with the perfectly ironed creases, and his tie, more carefully knotted than Will’s had ever been. Never dirty, never with the tell-tale stain of ink across his sleeves. “Yes,” Will decided.

“I enjoy cooking,” Hannibal explained. “I like to feed people.”

“Your old lady said something like that.”

“Bedelia?” Hannibal hummed softly. “I suppose I’ve fussed over her often enough. I’ve yet to have her sit for a proper meal, though. Perhaps you’d like to be a test subject?”

“If the rest of your cooking tastes like this, I’m in,” Will agreed, taking another bite, “How did you know it was my birthday, anyway?”

“Dr. Chilton keeps a notebook on his desk, I happened to glimpse it in passing.”

Will’s stomach rolled. A notebook. Not Will’s file, then, but a personal note Dr. Chilton had made. A note regarding Will. What else had been written there? What other observations had he made? What else did Chilton know?

How long had he been looking?

The bite in his mouth went sour. Will’s stomach recoiled, and he pushed up from the chair, darting for the door. He made it only to the tree line before his stomach rebelled again. He gagged into the bushes, spitting up cake and saliva. He couldn’t seem to make anything else come up, but nor could he settle the twists and turns of his gut.

A heavy hand landed on his back, and a wet nose shoved up against his side. Will twisted towards the latter and away from the former, but Hannibal took advantage of another dry heave to steady Will with one hand on his shoulder, the other pushing curls away from his eyes.

“You did that on purpose,” Will accused, gasping for breath.

“I suspected you would not be pleased,” Hannibal admitted, “I did not expect the breadth of your reaction.”

“Neither did I,” Will mumbled, wiping at his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

“How often has he been beating you?”

“What the _fuck_ , Hannibal?” Will spat, yanking away from his too-warm hands. “What kind of a question is that?”

Hannibal eyed him carefully and took a step closer. Will backed up. “An important one, I would think,” Hannibal murmured. “You were limping in the woods that night. You always seem to be limping. This time, you limped right up to yesterday. That’s a long time for a typical student caning.”

Will took another step back, as if he could distance himself from Hannibal’s words through more physical space. “You know,” he said. “You know what he’s like. And you’re not stupid. You don’t need me to tell you.”

“No, I don’t,” Hannibal agreed, “But I would like you to. I would like it if you were open with me, Will. It seems a shame to have any more secrets between us.”

“That’s not how this works,” Will said.

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” Will glared, folding his arms over his chest, defensive, and also cold. “I know _your_ secret, I hold the cards. I decide what happens now.”

Rather than fear or intimidation, Hannibal looked amused. “And what are your conditions, dear Will?

Will… Will hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. He hesitated, wiping at his mouth again. Hannibal winced at the rough treatment of Will’s school clothes, which only made Will want to do it again.

“I’ll let you know,” Will finally said.

_\-----_  
“Will.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Will hissed. Matt’s grin grew broader.

“ _Will_ ,” He said, poking at a bit of icing.

“Nobody asked you.” Will swatted Matt’s hand away from his cake. It had been waiting for him when he returned from class, sitting neatly on his desk, which had also been tidied to make room. He’d left Hannibal as quickly as possible the night before and left the cake behind as well. This, apparently, was not to be borne. Will had forgotten the prefects had access to a master key, though given Hannibal’s actions at the shed, Will wasn’t sure he needed it.

“ _Dear Will,”_ Matt read, holding the note out of reach, “ _You left so quickly, I was unable to send you with the leftovers-_ You ate with him? For real? He doesn’t just, I dunno, photosynthesize like some sort of weird, paisley plant?”

“Just give it back!” Will’s face was burning, and he didn’t quite know why. There was no reason for it. He hung out with Matt all the time, after all, and no one ever said anything about that.

This was different, though. Somehow. This was a note, his name written in perfect penmanship, a homemade cake.

Whatever it was, Matt could see it too. He danced backwards, out of Will’s reach, and continued to read, “ _I hope that you feel better today, and that you and your roommate enjoy the rest of the cake_ \- Oh good, he wants you to _share- Happy Birthday, Will. Sincerely-_ he writes letters like my _grandma – Hannibal Lecter._ Aww, he didn’t include his full title.”

“His _what?_ ”

Matt waved the paper through the air. Will just barely managed to snatch it, shoving it into a desk drawer, crumpled, hopefully to be forgotten about by both of them.

“His _title_. _Count_ Lecter. The _eighth_ ”

Will stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

“What, you haven’t heard that one yet?”

“Yeah, but I thought it was a joke!”

“No way, Willy. You’re being courted by an honest-to-God Count. Won’t your mama be so proud?”

“Shut _up_.” This time, Will punched him in the stomach, satisfied when Matt let out a gasp. “That’s not funny. I’m not queer.”

Matt rubbed at his stomach, glaring at the cake. “Yeah, well, Count Lecter just might be. He doesn’t talk to his sycophants, Will, he talks _at_ them. This is practically a proposal. You suppose he’ll go to Tiffany’s?”

Will hit him again. “He’s got a girl. He’s just a weird guy, he just doesn’t know how to make friends.”

“I’ll be his friend if he bakes me a fucking cake,” Matthew said, snickering. He stuck his fingers in the icing again. Will kicked him.

\-----  
“You can’t do stuff like that.”

Hannibal blinked down at him, framed in the doorway of his dorm room. “Will, what a surprise.”

Will pushed past him into the room. “You can’t do stuff like that.” He repeated.

“Please, come in,” Hannibal drawled, closing the door behind Will. The lock clicked into place, reminding Will that he was alone in a room with someone who had killed at least two other boys. He tensed, leaning against the desk. Hannibal frowned at him.

“Honestly, Will, I thought we were past this.”

“We are,” Will agreed hastily. “What we aren’t past is you breaking into my room to leave me presents.”

“It’s hardly breaking and entering when one has a school-sanctioned key,” Hannibal pointed out, “And you seemed to enjoy the cake.”

“Yeah, well, next time, meet me in the hallway or something. It looks…”

Hannibal watched him, steady, unyielding. Will flushed.

“You are worried that by leaving you a birthday cake, I made you look like a homosexual.”

Will blanched. “I don’t…”

“And yet,” Hannibal continued, looking from Will to the door, “Storming into my room after hours does not?”

Will looked at Hannibal. He looked at the door. With a sigh, he sank back against the desk, burying his face in his hands.

“I’m not… I’m not thinking clearly. I’m sorry. You were just trying to do a nice thing.”

“Your roommate teased you about the cake.”

Will shrugged. “He teases me about everything. I shouldn’t let it get to me.”

Hannibal crossed the room. Will tensed for a moment, but all he did was drop into the desk chair. “You fear any sort of connection with me where others can see it.”

Will swallowed. He felt like his mouth was full of glass, like whatever he spat out was only going to rip him open. “You’re going to get caught.”

“Perhaps,” Hannibal agreed, tilting his head. “I find it unlikely, though. People only see what they wish to see. There were far more obvious incidents I should have been linked to, and wasn’t.”

Will watched him, wary, understanding. “How old were you?” He asked, voice a harsh whisper, “The first time?”

Hannibal smiled with his mouth and frowned with his eyes. Suddenly, he looked very far away, instead of within touching distance.

“I was thirteen.”

“Thirteen,” Will whispered, trying to imagine it. At thirteen, he’d still been struggling to shed the trappings of childhood. He was _still_ struggling to shed them. “Why?”

“That time? Because he deserved it. I hunted that man for a very long time, Will.” Will could believe it. Even sitting down, allowing Will to tower over him, Hannibal carried a powerful determination in his body. Will was well aware that he lived on Hannibal’s whims.

There was a story, in Hannibal’s eyes, but Will knew if he tried to pry it out, it would only slice him to ribbons. Perhaps the shrapnel might even strike Hannibal.

“And now?” He whispered, “Did Mason Verger deserve it? Did Miggs?”

Hannibal smiled at him, all teeth. “Oh, absolutely.”

\-----  
It took Will several days to realize that he was passing by an opportunity. Hadn’t he said to Hannibal that he had the power? That he was in control now?

He didn’t _feel_ very in control, as he knocked on Hannibal’s door with his ratty schoolbag in his hand.

Hannibal looked slightly less surprised to see him this time, although he did have the tiniest hint of a smirk when Will actually waited to be invited in this time.

“What brings you here, Will?” Hannibal asked, once they were sealed away inside the room. Will handed Hannibal a textbook.

“I figured out how you can buy my silence,” He said, hoping he sounded a lot more confident than he actually felt. “I have six discussion questions due tomorrow. You can help me with them.”

Hannibal’s face closed off immediately. The smile dropped, and he looked almost… disappointed?

“Very well then,” He said, sitting stiffly at his desk.

“Page 109,” Will added helpfully. “It shouldn’t take too long. It’s just the Revolution.”

Hannibal looked like he wanted to mutter something, but was far too polite to do so. Enjoying being the one in charge for once, Will hopped up onto Hannibal’s bed, leaning back against the wall and trying not to smirk at Hannibal’s indignant look.

Hannibal stared at the book for a long time. He flipped back and forth through the pages a bit, skimming over text long enough that Will started to fidget.

“Page 109,” He repeated. Hannibal shot him a withering look.

“I’m well aware.”

Will clenched his fists in the fabric of his pants, picking at a loose thread. “Aren’t you going to read the questions?”

Hannibal paused in between pages, looking up at Will, a hint of his usual curiosity creeping back into his expression. “Out loud?” He asked.

Will frowned. “Well, yeah?”

Hannibal stared at him, long enough that Will started to flush and had to look away. Then, he turned back to the book.

“How was the proclamation of 1763 a cause of the American Revolution?”

Will relaxed a bit. Sometimes the questions were on things they hadn’t gone over, but this, he remembered. “Okay. So, the Proclamation of 1763 was set forth by Britain, to keep colonists from…”

He trailed off. Hannibal was still staring at him. “Aren’t you going to write any of this down?” Will asked.

“You came here to ask me to write your answers for you… in the literal sense?”

Will didn’t like the way Hannibal was looking at him. Nothing good ever came from being stared at so intensely. “I know the answers,” He said defensively, “I’m not stupid.”

The desk was right next to the bed, one edge pressing flush to the mattress. Hannibal slid the book towards Will.

“Will, read this paragraph for me.”

Will’s heart leapt up into his throat. “N-no.” He stammered, “No, I don’t want to.”

“Please, just a few sentences.”

Will shook his head, glaring down at the tiny print. “You buried two bodies in the woods, and I know where. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Will.” Hannibal’s voice was soft and gentle, more so than Will would have thought him capable of. He picked the book up and laid it out across Will’s lap. “Humor me. Just for a minute, and then I’ll do anything you want.”

Will stared down at the book, at its traitorous letters. “I _know_ how to read,” He insisted stiffly. Hannibal was silent, patient. Will huffed.

The words came out slow and muddled. They always did, no matter how short the sentence. “’In… In seventeen sixty-three, the Br-British sing- _signed_ the Tre…Treaty of Paris.’ There!” Will shoved the book back towards Hannibal. It bounced off the desk and hit the floor with a thud. “Happy now?” Will growled.

Hannibal didn’t look at him with pity, but he looked at him with something that might have been _fondness_ , and that was somehow worse.

“I can read,” Will insisted, and it sounded pathetic even to his own ears. “It’s just… It gives me headaches The letters don’t stay still. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s the best way I can describe it. It’s like everything gets jumbled up on the way from the page to my eyes. It’s stupid, I know, it sounds really dumb-“”

“Will.” Hannibal’s hand clasped gently around Will’s own. Will jerked back, folding his arms over his chest.

“I’m fine,” He snapped.

Hannibal looked him over thoughtfully. He turned away from the desk entirely, leaning back in his seat to watch him. “Has anyone ever tested you for dyslexia, Will?”

“...What?”

“It’s a learning disability.”

Will was instantly on the defensive, tension so tight through his shoulders that it ached. “I’m not a moron.”

“No,” Hannibal said slowly, “No, I don’t believe you are at all. I think you’re brilliant, Will.”

Will’s face flushed for an entirely different reason. He looked away, staring at a speck of discoloration on the wall. “You think I have a learning disability.”

“Which is not at all the same as being unintelligent.” Will knew that, of course he knew that, but it was somehow very different when the words were applied to _you_. He shrugged.

“You’re the first person to say anything.”

“It would have been something your teachers should have recommended you for.”

Will shrugged again. “Hard to learn anything about a kid who’s only in your classroom a couple of months.”

“You moved so often?”

“Every year since mom left when I was three. Sometimes twice in one year. Usually Louisiana, but we’ve been up and down the coast as well. We went where the jobs were. When the money ran out, so did we.”

“Still, for you to have made it this far without notice…”

“I do well on tests,” Will explained, “As long as it’s short-answer or multiple choice, and we went over the topic in class. I can remember everything the teacher said, as long as I have enough time to figure out the question. It’s just essays that get to me. And when they ask about stuff we never discussed. Otherwise I’m good. I’m not _stupid_ , it’s just hard sometimes.”

“Because you struggle with the assigned reading.”

Will nodded sheepishly.

“Everyone thinks you’re a trouble maker because you don’t do the homework.” Hannibal wasn’t saying anything Will didn’t know, but it still cut through him, sharp enough to make him flinch. Hannibal sighed, and placed his hand on Will’s arm again. “Come here, after class. We’ll do it together.”

Will relaxed, ever so slightly. “Don’t tell anyone,” He mumbled.

“Your secrets are as safe with me as mine are with you.”

And it was no comparison, not really, but it made Will feel a lot better, regardless.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shows up three weeks late with Starbucks* Yo.
> 
> So, confession time: This bit has been done for like two weeks now, but the thing is, it was originally part of a much longer chapter. I decided to split it because otherwise I would never update. Confession part 2.... This fic is really hard to write, guys, it requires concentrated effort and energy I just don't have. I like it, I'm proud of it, but it is harder to write than anything else I've written. It is not abandoned, not by a long shot, but it has permanently dropped itself to the bottom of my update list just because sometimes I don't have the energy to work on it, and I need to take a break and write something fun and easy for a bit. 
> 
> On to the fic itself:
> 
> Somebody pointed out to me that sadism is in and of itself frequently sexual and... yeah. Chilton's creepiness is definitely taking on a new turn. It's not gonna go far, I promise he will not act on it, but the implications are definitely there. And Will senses them, even if he doesn't quite get what he's picking up on yet. 
> 
> Hannibal is plucking at strings, trying to see if he can rip open Will's stitches and see inside of him. He's *fascinated* by him, and nursing a tiny bit of a crush. 
> 
> The dyslexia thing... I have done my best to fill every single bit of the prompt I got, and one of the details was that Hannibal would be this smart, popular kid, and Will was the outcast kid with the bad grades. But Will, canonically, is very smart, and I couldn't see him as purposefully lazy so... There had to be a reason he was failing all his assignments but still got into this school. I wasn't able to get a lot of information, but I did some research and Dyslexia did exist as a diagnosis by 1969, although I'm not sure what resources would have been available to Will even if he didn't move schools as much as he did. But Hannibal knows because of course he does.
> 
> Next time... Some of our favorite ladies come back, and Will makes a request.


End file.
